


Like Two Blind Men

by animeangelriku



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, HS!AU, HS!CrissColfer, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5189513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animeangelriku/pseuds/animeangelriku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Colfer is starting his sophomore year at the San Francisco Dalton Academy. In an entirely new city, a new home, and a new school, he bumps into Darren Criss, who becomes his first and eventual best friend. As the two begin to spend more time together, Chris and Darren realize that they have feelings for each other that go beyond the friendship they’ve created. Now all they need to do is take a leap of faith together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Two Blind Men

**Author's Note:**

> Holy fuck, I can’t believe this is finally done! I want to thank the wonderful Madeline for being my beta at the very last minute, when I was about to fall into despair. I also want to thank the ever loving kind mods and admins at the CrissColferBigBang for giving me more time to finish this when school made me want to cry. And finally, the biggest thanks go out to Tk, for being one of the best artists I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with, as well as one of the greatest people ever. She kept me calm when I was losing my head and she gave me words of inspiration that got me through the worst of writer’s block. Thank you for working with me a second time to bring these silly boys together!

So. Chris’ dorm room wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. 

Not that he’d thought the academy would be some sort of hole in the middle of nowhere, but now he realized that living sixteen years in Clovis (which was, actually, some sort of hole in the middle of nowhere) could only give him such mediocre expectations about the real world. He had a desk for his computer, a chair with wheels—which was already something he would have never expected—a bookshelf, a sink, a closet with two sliding doors, a twin bed, and a smaller desk with a drawer and two shelves next to the bed. He honestly didn’t think he’d get this much.

Chris looked around the four naked walls that would be his home for the next three years—if he was lucky—and tried not to panic. It had been easy in the car ride, where both of his parents kept talking above each other, trying to give him last-minute parental advice on how to survive far away from home; where Hannah had been staring at the ceiling, all the while humming some random tune every once in a while; where he had been looking through the window, wanting to memorize as many street names as he could before he got to the campus. 

“It’s gonna be weird,” Hannah had said, “not seeing you around the house.”

“I’ll be home for the holidays,” Chris had answered, though the words had been directed at his parents (especially his mom) more than at his sister. “It’ll be sooner than you think.”

Hannah had groaned beside him. “Let me get used to a house all by myself before you spoil it.”

He’d smiled at her, even though she couldn’t see it. Hannah was the calmest out of his family, and hearing her speak made Chris feel calmer by default. Hell, even sitting next to her made him feel calmer most of the time. But now Hannah wasn’t with him anymore, and after living in the same town and knowing the exact same people his entire life, the panic and anxiety that came with moving to another city where he didn’t know anybody were starting to catch up to him.

“It’s only a three-hour-long drive,” he’d told his mother when she had asked, horrified, if he was really considering moving to another town to finish high school. It had been mostly to ease her worries so that she wasn’t so hesitant to let him go, though now he focused on those words to remain calm while he unpacked his books from the cardboard boxes his father had helped him carry inside his room. He wasn’t on the other side of the world; he was simply three hours away, in San Francisco. Whatever emergency he might have, or anything he might need his family’s help with, he could just hop on a bus to Fresno and then take another bus to Clovis. His father had said that surely he would make friends that could help him in smaller situations, where a trip back home wasn’t exactly necessary, but Chris wasn’t really counting on that option. He’d never been good with social relationships. 

He jumped when someone knocked on the open door of his room. It was a boy with a mop of black curls on the top of his head and a smile that was already starting to scare Chris a little. It was too… cheerful, his eyes crunched up a little bit at the corners; usually not the kind of smile you gave a stranger. 

“Hey!” the boy exclaimed. He had a clipboard in one of his hands. “You’re Christopher, right? Christopher Paul Colfer?”

Chris nodded, even though it was weird to hear someone he didn’t know call him by his full name. He was afraid that if he spoke, though, he’d come off as rude and douche-y. 

“Okay, just wanted to check that you’d gotten here safe and sound,” the boy smiled. He took a pen from above his ear, clicked it, and began to furiously write something down on the clipboard.

“Okay,” Chris said. He waited for the boy to leave so that he could keep unpacking, but the stranger remained on the doorway of his room, still writing. “Um…” Chris cleared his throat. “Can I help you with anything else?”

“Give me a sec,” the boy said, his eyes focused on the clipboard in front of him. The only sound was that of the boy’s pen gliding over paper, and it was… actually soothing. Chris had stopped writing his original stories on a notebook, opting for his computer, but he had always loved the sound a pen or pencil made on a sheet of paper. 

“There!” The boy clicked his pen and put it back above his ear. When he looked back at Chris, he was smiling again and holding out his hand. “I’m Darren, by the way!”

Chris stared a moment at the hand held out in front of him before he hesitantly shook it with his own. “Chris,” he said. 

“Just Chris?” the boy, Darren, asked, and Chris reluctantly nodded as he let go of the other hand. Darren, once more, clicked his pen and wrote something on his clipboard. “Okay, just Chris. I’m glad that you’re already here with us!”

What was this guy, part of some crazy, cheery welcoming committee? 

“Thank you,” Chris said, simply to be polite. 

“Well,” said Darren. “If you need any help with anything whatsoever, I’ll be in the auditorium for the time being, and I promise to do whatever I can. If you happen to get lost, there are maps of the entire campus all across every building!”

“Okay,” Chris said. His father had told him the exact same thing when he’d dropped off the last of Chris’ boxes, but he still appreciated the good intentions. 

“Okay, then! See you later!” Darren said, and he left with a wave of his hand before Chris had any chance to stop him. 

Hm. All right. That was a little weird, but Chris could live with that. He was going to open himself up to new experiences and new relationships, even if he didn’t understand them the moment they happened. He didn’t expect to be received so warmly the day he arrived, given that it was still a week before school officially started; he actually expected to kind of blend in before people realized he hadn’t been a student here last year so he didn’t have to go through the process of introducing himself to his classmates. So he didn’t have to say that he was from a town called Clovis (he hadn’t practiced the words, “It’s close to Fresno, if that helps”, though he knew he should have), he intended to finish high school here in San Fran, and he was excited to begin this new step in his life; all while lying, because he was more scared as hell than excited. 

Now there was one person who knew he was one of the surely many new kids in the academy… or maybe he was the only one, and thanks to Darren, everyone would know by next Monday. 

Okay, he needed to take a deep breath. He hadn’t been in his new room for even ten minutes and he was already freaking out. Everything was going to be okay. His parents had told him, Hannah had told him (albeit a bit distractedly, since she’d been playing with Chris’ Nintendo DS), and Chris knew it deep within himself. He just had to breathe. Everything was going to be okay.

First things first: he had to eat something if he wanted to finish unpacking. 

*

Chris couldn’t believe that, with the fourteen maps on the B building of campus, he still couldn’t find the goddamn cafeteria. He wanted to ask if there was some sort of on-campus grocery store or something along those lines, and if there wasn’t, he was going to need to stock up on some snacks for the time being. Besides, being friends with the lunch ladies (or gentlemen, there was really no way for him to know) was always a good idea. 

But he’d spent the last forty minutes looking for the cafeteria, only to find himself completely lost within the maze of halls and walls that he couldn’t possibly begin to distinguish after having been less than three hours in this place. 

Chris realized he had two options: either he could go back to his room to starve himself for another hour or so before he attempted finding the cafeteria again, or he could go to the auditorium to ask for help. Truthfully, neither of those options seemed that appealing to him, but he supposed he had to choose the lesser of two evils. 

He didn’t like the idea of staying in his room, trying to distract himself from the hunger that would eventually come. He knew he was still a little nervous, but not enough to go the rest of the day without eating something. Then again, he didn’t want to start his first day at the San Francisco Dalton Academy by having to ask for directions when there were fourteen maps scattered throughout his building.

Chris sighed inwardly to himself. 

_Well,_ he thought. _I guess making a fool out of myself is better than starving._

He hurried off to the room closest to him.

*

He hadn’t even walked inside the auditorium when he heard the screaming.

“Jesus _Christ,_ Darren, I told you not to hang that fucking sign up with _fucking pins, you idiot!”_

“Well, we didn’t have any nails lying around when I hung it up there, Kyle! It was only going to be until I got the nails!”

“AND WHERE ARE THE NAILS, YOU BASTARD?”

Chris wondered if this was such a good idea after all. Darren was the only other student Chris had sort of met so far, and he seemed to be busy. He didn’t hear Darren say anything again until Kyle—was that his name?—screamed, “THEN GO GET THEM, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!”

Before Chris could walk away from the doors of the auditorium (maybe trying to find the cafeteria again was totally worth a shot this time), one of them burst open, nearly hitting him on the face. 

Darren’s eyes widened as soon as he saw Chris, and a grin spread across his face. Chris resisted the urge to take a step back; such joyfulness on a face he wasn’t used to seeing yet still freaked him out a bit. 

“Hey!” Darren cried, like he’d just seen an old friend. 

“Hey,” Chris said. He tried to smile back, at least, but he was only able to perk up one of the corners of his mouth before he pressed his lips into a thin line and cleared his throat. “Um, listen, I know you’re probably really busy, but… could you tell me where the cafeteria is?” Then he felt like he needed to add, “I can’t, um…”

Darren simply stared at him, still smiling, as he waited for Chris to finish talking—which was disappointing, because Chris had just realized how stupid his words were. He didn’t need to say he was lost! He didn’t need to confess that he hadn’t found the cafeteria, despite having more than ten maps around him pointing out the way! God damn, this day was turning out to be worse than all of the worst-case scenarios Chris had thought up before his arrival. 

He wondered if he should just shut up and hope that Darren let the subject drop. He could, probably, but he felt like it would be even worse to let Darren hanging like that. 

“I can’t really, um, find it… anywhere.”

For a second, Chris thought that Darren would laugh at his idiocy, that he would make some joke about how stupid Chris was, and he looked down at the ground, waiting to hear kind words filled with disapproval and mockery.

“Wait, where did you go?”

Chris raised his head and glanced at Darren, who was looking at him with a serious expression on his face (so different to the smiles Chris had seen) and furrowed eyebrows, like he was trying to figure out a particularly difficult math problem. 

“I’m sorry?” he said, not really understanding the question.

“Where did the maps say the cafeteria was?” Darren asked him. His words, contrary to what Chris had expected to hear, weren’t laced with superiority; instead, Darren sounded… confused. Did he not know his own campus?

“Um, between the B and L buildings,” Chris answered. 

Darren sighed to himself and pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something incomprehensible under his breath. 

“I didn’t know why I thought they’d change the maps a week before school starts,” he said, though it was, again, mostly to himself. Without giving Chris a chance to ask what he meant, he was back to smiling, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “That’s where the cafeteria _used_ to be until last year, but most of the students complained that it was too far from the classrooms, so they moved it to the other side of the L building. I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about mentioning that!”

“Oh…” Huh. Well, Chris didn’t feel like such an embarrassment now. “Oh, um… okay. Thank you.”

“I’m really sorry,” Darren insisted. “I had the feeling I’d forgotten to tell you something—”

“That’s okay,” Chris said hurriedly. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault the maps are a little outdated.”

“No, I know, but still.”

“It’s okay. Really.” Darren scratched the back of his neck, like he wanted to apologize again but feared Chris wouldn’t accept his apology. It really wasn’t his fault, though, and just when Chris had the sudden need to clear that up, Darren spoke. 

“On that note, I should let you know that the cafeteria is, uh, closed on Sundays. And until classes start.”

Chris opened his mouth to speak, but then he closed it again. Great. Simply great. Out of all the things he had reminded himself to ask his parents for, the one thing he had absolutely forgotten was food. Even some junk food, just to keep his adrenaline up and running for today. 

“Is there someplace else where I can buy something to eat?” he asked.

“Well, there’s a 7 Eleven kind of store just outside of campus,” Darren answered. “I can take you, if you want.”

Chris felt relief flood his entire body—a store outside of campus was still a store he could get to in times of need—although it was soon replaced by confusion. “Aren’t you busy?” He glanced at the auditorium doors, remembering the screaming he’d heard a few minutes ago. 

“Hm?” Darren turned his head over his shoulders and then shook his head. “Oh, you heard that?”

Chris felt all the blood in his system rush up to his head. He’d almost forgotten that he had been outside the auditorium when the entire pins-and-nails commotion happened. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop or anything—”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” said Darren. “Kyle can be pretty loud when he really gets going. Anyway, he’ll be fine if I leave him fifteen minutes with everybody else. He might even forget he’s angry with me after a while.”

“Are you sure?” Chris asked him. “Because if you’re busy, I can just get there on my own.” Actually, he preferred going on his own rather than having someone accompanying him. He wasn’t the kind of person to make small talk with people he had just met, and Darren seemed to be the kind of person who _did._

Then again, every assumption Chris had made about Darren had proven to be wrong.

“Nonsense. C’mon, let’s go!” Darren grinned at Chris and started walking away from the auditorium. Chris supposed he could ask Darren to simply give him directions to this store, if he felt so uncomfortable about the idea of both of them going together. But Darren was being nice enough as it was, and Chris couldn’t just throw that back on his face. 

So he caught up with Darren and followed him to the 7 Eleven kind of store.

*

Over his two years in the San Francisco Dalton Academy, Darren had been asked many times if he was the head of the Welcoming Committee for freshmen (or new students in general). He always felt kind of weird telling whoever had asked him that no—as far as he knew, the academy didn’t have any committee of the sort. He just liked welcoming new students. Starting a new school year in an unknown place could be unsettling for a lot of people, and Darren knew by experience that most of them were too shy or too scared to approach the juniors and the seniors; hell, even the sophomores were difficult to talk to for some of them. 

If there was anyone willing to be a human link between the newcomers and the people who’d had at least a year to get used to the academy, it was him. 

The school principal hadn’t been on board with the idea at first, especially because Darren had suggested it midway through his first year in the academy; he argued that it was too much trouble, Darren couldn’t possibly handle it on his own, and no one would want to help him carry out his self-appointed mission, anyway. But Darren asked him to give him a chance, this might be good for the students, it would create bigger social circles and kids wouldn’t feel as excluded as Darren had seen them (and felt himself) during his freshman year. 

“All right,” Principal Morrison had agreed. “I’ll make you a deal. If I see that this… ‘project’ of yours succeeds—” He’d even made air-quotes around the word _project_ , Darren had never quite forgotten about that, “—then I’ll let you keep it up until you graduate.”

And so, Darren Criss had become the threshold guardian of Dalton Academy, so to speak. Except that, instead of testing new students to see if they deserved to pass, he welcomed them with open arms. 

Darren was on his way to the auditorium when he saw the red car pulling up in the parking lot, which surprised him, given that it was Sunday. The school year didn’t start until next week, and he was pretty sure that every single student was aware of that fact. Still, as soon as he saw a boy carrying boxes heading towards the B building, he ran to his room to get his clipboard and the list of new students starting out this year, given to him by Principal Morrison himself. The boy signed under room B206 was Christopher Paul Colfer. Darren didn’t have any other information about him, since the paper sheet he had only included the students’ names, except that he was a sophomore who was transferring to the academy to finish high school. 

When Darren got to room B206, the boy’s boxes had all been dropped off, so Darren introduced himself to Christopher (who went by Chris, an observation that Darren wrote down on his list of names, along with the day Chris had arrived) and welcomed him like the threshold guardian he was. 

And if he had known that Kyle was only going to yell at him once he got to the auditorium, he would’ve found some excuse to continue talking to Chris. He seemed like a nice guy, after all… and talking to someone Darren didn’t know certainly beat having to hear Kyle complain that he’d used pins for the WELCOME TO DALTON ACADEMY sign he’d put on the auditorium. 

Obviously, when the chance to talk to Chris arose nearly an hour later, he took it before it was snatched away from him. 

Chris seemed like a nice guy; perhaps a little shy at the moment, but Darren could understand that. If he had transferred to a different school, Darren was probably the first person Chris knew in the academy. He was determined to make the most out of that connection. 

They’d passed by Chris’ room so he could get more cash than the few quarters he’d carried in his pockets. On their way to the small grocery store (fuck, Darren couldn’t remember what it was called), Chris didn’t say a word. He kept glancing at the dorm buildings surrounding them, or at the gardens in the distance. Maybe he was trying to familiarize himself with his new environment, or maybe he was trying to memorize the right way to the cafeteria so that he didn’t get lost anymore. In any case, Darren didn’t say anything—if Chris didn’t want to start a conversation with him, he wasn’t going to, either. Some people liked to keep to themselves, after all, and forcing them to come out of their shells wasn’t the best idea. 

“Um…”

Darren turned to look at Chris, whose eyes were on the floor. 

“Thank you for, you know.” Chris shrugged his shoulders. “For taking the time to show me the way.”

“You’re welcome,” Darren said with a smile. 

“I know you didn’t have to,” Chris continued, still not making eye contact. “I don’t think just anybody would have done it, especially because I didn’t really ask you to do it, so I really appreciate it.”

Darren couldn’t help the grin forcing itself upon his mouth. “No problem. I did say that I’d try to help you with anything you needed.”

“Yes,” Chris said, “but I didn’t expect you to take it so literally.”

“Well, I’m a literal person.”

Then, without any apparent explanation, Chris chuckled to himself, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” he said before Darren had the courage to ask him about it. Then, for the first time since they had left the auditorium, Chris turned to look at him. “It’s just… you said you’re a literal person.”

“I did,” Darren said, confused as to where Chris’ reasoning was going. 

“That kind of goes without saying, though,” Chris said. “Because if… if you weren’t a literal person, then you wouldn’t exist.”

It took Darren a moment to understand what Chris meant, but it was probably a moment too many, because Chris’ face fell, and he glanced at the floor again, pressing his lips into a thin line. “I’m sorry, that was—”

By then, Darren was already laughing, and he saw Chris stop dead on his tracks and shyly raise his head to look at him. 

“That was brilliant,” he said, taking a deep breath. “‘I’m a literal person.’ Yeah, I suppose I am.”

“I’m sorry,” Chris apologized, and now he was the one rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know why I said that.”

They had made some great progress in the last few minutes, and Darren wasn’t going to let that slip away.

“Well, because it’s true!” he said. “It was a bit of a thinker, to be honest. I mean, I didn’t understand what you said until I replayed it all in my head.” Then he let out another laugh, followed by a low whistle. “‘A literal person.’ I can’t believe it.”

Chris chuckled slightly, and his eyes went back to the ground. 

*

A few more hundred steps after Chris’ ridiculous attempt at a joke, they got to the edge of the academy’s campus, and Darren pointed out a small grocery store across the street with a huge sign that said OXXO. 

“There it is,” he said. “It’s open 24/7, so it’s a nice alternative to the cafeteria. Although, if you want to know my opinion, I prefer the convenience store either way.”

Chris was simply happy to have a place where he could stock up on cans of Diet Coke (or bottles, if the store had them) at any time of the day. 

The store was, from Chris’ perspective, bigger than any 7 Eleven he had ever been to. It had five tiny aisles, each of them filled with junk food, or plastic silverware, or canned vegetables and tuna, or condiments, or small toys, though Chris didn’t know why high school students would want to purchase small toys on a convenience store. He even saw a shelf of cell phones near the cashier. Of course, none of them were the latest iPhone, but flip phones were still useful. There was a reason they were still being sold, after all. 

“Is this okay?” Darren asked him as Chris walked through the aisles of OXXO. “Because if you can’t find what you want, we can always go look for another place.”

“No, no, this is fine,” Chris assured him. Just like in 7 Eleven, there were fridges at the end of the store, where he looked for either cans or bottles of Diet Coke. He didn’t have the money to buy more than two cans (and some cookies, or even a sandwich, he’d seen a little fridge with them), but he could always come back with a few more dollars. 

Darren was browsing through the aisle next to his, and he glanced at Chris from above the shelves. 

“Can I ask you a question?”

Chris would have usually said no. When people wanted to ask him something, more often than not, it was a question related to his personal life. He hadn’t liked to talk about it back in Clovis, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about it on an entirely different city with someone he had known about twenty minutes. But, for some reason, hearing a personal question from Darren didn’t make him want to lock himself up in his room like it always did. The guy had laughed at his stupid joke, that ought to count for something. 

“Sure,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and avoiding all eye contact with Darren. Just in case. 

“How come you’re starting your sophomore year in the academy instead of your freshman year?”

Chris shrugged again, more out of habit than anything else. “I found out about it midway through my freshman year. If it had been up to me, I would’ve transferred then, but I was afraid that my school wouldn’t let me.”

Darren made a tiny, almost imperceptible, “hm” sound at the back of his throat, but he didn’t add another word. Once Chris had decided on his two cans of Diet Coke and a three-piece ham and chipotle sandwich, he made his way to the front of the store, where Darren caught up to him, a bag of Twizzlers on his hand that Chris couldn’t help eye suspiciously. God, he hated those things. 

“Hey, don’t look at me like that!” Darren cried out. “They’re not my favorite, but they’re the closest thing to Red Vines that I can get at the moment.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say Red Vines are that much better,” Chris muttered.

Darren gasped and put a hand to his chest, like Chris had personally offended him with that comment. “How dare you!”

Chris couldn’t help letting out a laugh, which felt weird to him. He had laughed a lot today with someone whose last name he didn’t know. It was difficult for him to laugh, even with Hannah; it had always been her who laughed enough for both of them. 

“I’m just saying,” he began as the girl behind the cashier scanned his items, “I think there’s better junk food than Red Vines.”

“Like what, a three-piece sandwich?”

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be?” Chris took out his small stack of dollars to pay the girl, who was putting his cans of soda and his sandwich in a bag. 

“It’s in _three_ pieces, Chris,” Darren said. “Sandwiches aren’t supposed to be in three pieces, much less if they’re all triangular! That’s a sandwich and a half! What happened to the half of the other sandwich?”

“Okay, first of all,” Chris said, his bag of food in one hand and his change in the other one, “sandwiches aren’t junk food, they’re part of a healthy school lunch.”

Darren huffed out a snort as he waited for the girl to scan his Twizzlers. “Not if they’ve got chipotle, they’re not.”

“What do you have against my sandwich?” Chris asked, almost indignant by now, as he took his sandwich out of the plastic bag and tore open the package.

“What do you have against Red Vines?” Darren replied, waving the bag of Twizzlers in his hand.

“Those aren’t—”

“Well, no!” he interrupted before Chris could finish his sentence. “But I don’t have any Red Vines to wave around, do I?”

*

Convincing Darren that he would be fine now that he knew where to purchase the resources to physically sustain himself was harder than Chris thought, but in the end he was able to do it. He’d never had anyone worrying so much over him—except his parents, of course, but it was their job to worry about him, although they worried much more over Hannah. 

All that was left for Chris to do was to finish unpacking his boxes. Then he could get ready for his final week of somewhat freedom before school started, along with this new life he was about to begin.

Oh, god.

*

Chris wanted to make time go faster just so that he could start going to school already. Three days locked in his room were more than he could handle, and he had gone to the OXXO store so many times already that the girl who worked in the middle of the week already called him by name, and he did the same thing with her. 

It hadn’t been so bad, at first. He’d taken Monday to explore the B building and the ones surrounding it so that he could get to know his campus and not get lost during his first day of school. Then he had spent half of his Tuesday to continue his exploring, and he decided that he knew where most of the classrooms were now and it was enough exploring for the time being. Wednesday, Chris had had a bit of an existential crisis, lying down on his bed for three hours, just looking at the ceiling and sipping from his can of Diet Coke as the same words ran over his head, again and again and again.

_What am I doing here?_

Well, he was here because he wanted to dedicate his life to writing, whether his words were printed on a book or said by an actor on TV, and Dalton was one of the few schools in the entirety of California that had any sort of focus on the arts. Sure, Chris would have to learn Algebra, Biology, Chemistry and all the other subjects his old school in Clovis had been so focused on, but he would also have a Creative Writing class, along with Journalism and Non-Fiction Writing. Yes, Dalton was a private school, which added an unexpected cost to his parents’ credit, but they hadn’t really cared about that, they had only wanted him to be happy… even if it meant letting him live three hours away from home for the next three years. 

That’s why he was here, wasn’t it? To get the kind of education that would allow him to make something out of his life, not just the kind of basic education that would give him a job to barely sustain himself until he was sixty. 

Even if he already had his answer, the question still repeated itself inside his head.

_What am I doing here?_

Hannah used to say that Chris always looked lonely, for some reason—lonely and sad. She always thought he was about to cry, and she often told him his sadness was contagious. “I’m not sad,” Chris said once, looking down at the book he was reading, even though he wasn’t really reading it anymore. 

“Maybe you don’t know you are,” she replied. “But it’s like… like you’re just passing by, Bubba. Like you can’t wait to get out of here.”

“I _can’t_ wait to get out of here,” he had said with a smile, hoping to see her crack one, too. That had always been true. Chris hated Clovis, and he would have given anything to leave as long as he knew his family would be okay. But Hannah’s smile hadn’t been an amused one—more like a pitying one, as if she couldn’t believe her brother was so oblivious.

“That’s not what I meant,” she had said. 

Was that the reason he had wanted to leave his hometown behind so bad? Because he was sad and lonely? He had never… minded being alone. He was used to it, actually. He had grown used to not having any real friends—except for Hannah, who liked to joke that siblings couldn’t be friends, too—with people only acknowledging him when he could help them with something, usually an essay or a book report. Did he expect to make friends here? He wasn’t looking for popularity or anything of the sort, being on his own fit him just fine, but… would it be so bad, if he got to know and became friends with some of his classmates?

Chris had immediately thought of Darren. They had only known each other for about an hour, and Chris had awkwardly joked with him and argued with him about healthy snacks and junk food. It had just been so easy, talking to Darren, as if the guy had some sort of mental magnet that instantly caused people around him to start up a conversation. Did that make them friends? Chris considered just asking Darren if they were, but he cringed at the thought of it. How socially inept was he if he had to ask someone if they were friends?

On Thursday, Chris had taken the chance to catch up on some of the biographies he hadn’t read yet, because surely he wouldn’t be able to read much of his personal bibliography when he started school. After about six hours, he had decided to turn off his computer and close his eyes for a bit. Even with his reading glasses, spending so much time in front of his computer screen really tired him out. By midday on Friday, Chris had cleaned his room and rearranged his belongings more times than he wanted to admit, and the only escape he had found from his voluntary confinement was going to the OXXO, but after a while, that got old, too. He could only buy so many bottles and cans of Diet Coke.

On Saturday morning, Chris thought he was going to go insane. He woke up early, earlier than he had in the entire week, and he decided that he might as well try to be productive, to get in gear for the school year if for nothing else. 

He had spent almost half of the day in front of his laptop, staring at the ominously white, blank Microsoft Word page, when there was a knock on the door. 

“Who is it?” he asked, his eyes still on the laptop screen. 

“It’s Darren!” called the voice from the other side of Chris’ room. Chris leaned back on his chair and glanced at the door.

“Come in,” he said. The door creaked a little when Darren swung it open, but that didn’t erase the beaming grin on his face. Was the guy always smiling? Was the smile spray-painted on his face or something?

“Hey,” Darren smiled, his voice still far too enthusiastic for Chris’ liking when he felt like he was three seconds away from slamming his head against the wall, if it meant he would have something interesting to take care of.

“Hey,” he replied. “What’s up?” He tried not to make a face at those words. He was usually never the one to say them. 

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Darren said. “You know, with the beginning of the school year approaching and everything.”

“Well, I guess I could be better,” Chris said, nearly slamming the lid of his laptop shut. It was infuriating, seeing that blank page stare back at him. He turned around on his chair and saw Darren looking like he had been personally insulted by someone he admired.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked. “Can I do something to help you?”

“Um…” Chris let out a nervous laugh. “No, nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I’m just… really bored. I’ve been pretty much locked in this room the entire week, and it’s kind of driving me mad.”

“Oh,” Darren said, already looking relieved that he hadn’t somehow let Chris down. “Yeah, I guess that would drive anyone mad. Have you been to the rest of the campus yet?”

“I’ve seen most of it,” Chris answered. “I found the cafeteria…” Darren smiled amusedly at that, “I saw the outside of the library, since the building itself was closed, I found all my classrooms for this semester, and I was a little outraged when I didn’t find any sort of laundry room.”

Darren laughed, and he leaned back against the door. “A lot of us have complained about that, but there really hasn’t been any response from Principal Morrison. Or anyone above him, in case there is someone. We all just go to the Laundromat across the street.”

Chris nearly fell from his chair. “There’s a Laundromat across the street?”

Darren ended up taking him to the Laundromat, which was across the street on the other side on campus, in the completely opposite direction from the OXXO. At least now Chris knew that going from one place to the other one would help him lose whatever pounds he gained with all the junk food and “healthy snacks” he was sure he would eventually spend his money on.

Before Darren left Chris to his voluntary confinement, he said, “Hey, can I give you my number?”

The simple combination of words, regardless of their context, made Chris’ blood rush up to his head. “I’m sorry?”

“So that you can reach me if you need anything,” Darren said, his hand already held out with his palm facing upwards. Chris wasn’t the kind of person to just hand his phone to other people, not even when they politely asked for it, but he supposed that maybe he should start being one. 

He grabbed his phone from his bedside desk and gave it to Darren, who chirped “Thank you!” with a smile as he typed his number in. “Okay,” Darren said once he was finished. “There we go!”

“Thanks,” Chris said, placing his phone back where he had kept it since Sunday. 

“No problem.” Darren gave him another smile, and then he walked out of Chris’ room.

Sunday was the day his body decided to freak out about everything Chris hadn’t freaked out up to that point. He started freaking out about whether he had all of his school supplies in order. Should he use his binder or a notebook for each of his classes? He had both five-subject and three-subject notebooks, should he use those instead? Were all of his pens and pencils and mechanical pencils in his case? Did he have everything packed in his backpack? What if he forgot something? _Had_ he forgotten something?

Before he could really think about it, Chris grabbed his phone and texted Darren, asking him all the ridiculous questions his mind had plagued him with since he had woken up. 

_Darren:  
So… you wanna know what I think is the best notebook?_

_Chris:  
Well, you’ve been here more than I have, I’m sure you have a lot more experience than I do at this._

After a few seconds of panicking because Darren hadn’t sent him anything else, Chris’ phone _dinged_ with another message. 

_Darren:  
I used to take a single notebook on the first day of school, and I’d decide on what kind to use after I saw what classes were heavier than others. _

All right. Okay, Chris could work with that. It was a good idea.

_Chris:  
Okay. I’ll see how that goes. Thanks!_

_Darren:  
No problem! :) anything else I can help you with?_

_Chris:  
Not at the moment, but thanks for the offer._

_Darren:  
Okay then. See you tomorrow! _

*

Chris laid his head down on the cafeteria table where he and Darren were currently sitting at. Darren was softly strumming his guitar, and he had played it so much around Chris during the month he had been at Dalton already that not hearing Darren play with it, even if he wasn’t doing anything else, made him nervous sometimes. It was like the static-like sound Chris heard whenever he was alone in his room, completely enveloped in silence, except that Darren’s strumming was a lot nicer to his ears. 

“Tired?” Darren asked him, and Chris only had the energy to kind of nod, given the position his head was in. 

“I thought that my old school was awful,” Chris said, “but Dalton really gives it a run for its money…”

Darren laughed, and the sound was like music to Chris, like another note on Darren’s guitar. At first, his friend’s enthusiasm and overall joy and mirth was slightly annoying to Chris, but after spending nearly every single day with Darren, he had grown used to his never-ending energy.

“Is it really that bad?”

“No,” Chris answered. “I mean, it’s not that it’s bad. It’s just that I have so much work to do now…”

“Well, you took more classes than the sophomores usually do,” Darren said. “I really admire you, though! You haven’t fainted on me yet.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Chris said. He sat back down on his chair before he fell asleep on the table, and he just tried to focus on Darren’s fingers as he played with the chords of his guitar, not really playing any song but still creating some nice, background music. 

“I wish I’d taken up another class this semester,” Darren said. 

“Believe me,” Chris groaned, then laughed a little. “You don’t.”

“When I look at you, I think exactly the same thing,” Darren chuckled, and Chris tried to kick him under the table. “Ow, hey!” He started laughing again. Once he calmed down, he continued talking. “What’s bad about it is that it just means I have to take it next year and I would’ve liked to get it out of the way as soon as possible.”

“What class did you want to take?”

“Song-writing,” Darren answered. “It’s not actually called that, but that name’s easier to remember.”

“You write songs?” Chris asked him, a little more awake now.

“Sometimes.” Darren strummed another chord on his guitar. “I write music more than lyrics, but I’d love to learn how to properly write songs, you know?” 

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get your chance next year,” Chris yawned, leaning his arms on the table and his chin on top of them. “Or maybe even next semester.”

“Yeah, I guess I’ll just see about it when I need to. Now,” Darren said as he hung his guitar strap across his chest and stood up from the table. “I gotta go. And if you wanna take some sort of nap, just go to your room, Chris, ‘cause the lunch ladies don’t really like it when we sleep on the tables.”

Chris tried to hold back a yawn with the back of his hand. “You have a habit of sleeping on the cafeteria tables?”

“Not anymore.” Darren winked at him and then waved with his hand. “I’ll see you later, Christopher Paul Colfer.”

Chris watched his… friend walk away from him. He couldn’t believe that it had already been a month since he had gotten to Dalton and three weeks since he had started school, much less could he believe that Darren had stuck around him for so long. Chris… he liked being with Darren, sure, but this kind of thing didn’t happen to him. It hadn’t happened to him when he was in Clovis, and he hadn’t expected it to happen at Dalton, especially not this quickly. 

“Why do you like calling me by my full name?” Chris wondered, fully aware that Darren wasn’t here to hear him anymore. 

*

Darren Criss was a mystery to Chris.

He really didn’t understand the guy. He had tried to do so, ever since the two of them had met, but he hadn’t been successful so far.

First of all, Darren, the most popular guy in the entire freaking high school—Chris didn’t need to be a social genius to figure that out within the first week at Dalton—, decided that Chris was his new best friend (and Chris was probably the least likeable person in the entire freaking high school).

Second, he started hanging out with Chris between _and_ after classes during most days (and Chris was kind of taken aback every time Darren popped next to him, like he came out of nowhere; one of these days, he was going to give Chris a heart attack, he was sure of it).

Third, he started passing stupid, silly notes to Chris during the few classes they shared together whenever the teacher wasn’t looking (and when Chris said “stupid, silly notes”, he meant notes that said things like, “Okay, you’re a writer. Are you seriously telling me there is no word in the entire English language that rhymes with orange?” And there wasn’t. Not as far as Chris knew).

Fourth, Darren sometimes went to the library when Chris was studying or writing and just plopped down across the table from him, and when Chris asked him what he wanted, Darren just shook his head and kept staring at him, like he was amazed by the sight of Chris doing whatever he was doing at the moment (and, to be honest, Chris didn’t know whether to feel stalked or humbled… and that kind of pissed him off).

Fifth… well, one could get the overall gist.

Darren had spent way too much time with Chris lately, and Chris simply couldn’t understand why.

Darren had everybody practically at his feet, but if he wanted anything, he went to Chris, instead of the surely more experienced juniors that Darren called his classmates. Whenever he wanted to just talk, Chris would find Darren outside his dorm room, leaning against the doorframe with this stupidly huge grin on his face, and he would ask, “Hey! Are you busy?”

And Chris was never busy. Well, he was, but he was never busy for Darren. Even if he had a short story he needed to finish for an assignment, or a paper he needed to finish before the printers in the library were turned off, or a good book he was really hooked with, or something that simply couldn’t wait for later… Chris always answered, “No. Come in.”

And he sort of really hated himself for that.

Ever since Darren had made his way into Chris’ personal space, the day he first got to Dalton, Chris hadn’t been able to push him away. The closest he came to pushing his obnoxiously cheerful new friend away was when he said, “Darren, can you please not play that guitar right now? You can write as many songs as you want to, but if you’re going to play, too, I’m going to have to ask you to leave me alone, I _need_ to finish this!”

And Darren immediately put the guitar aside with a smile and a soft, “Sorry, man.”

How could Darren stand someone like Chris? What did Chris have that Darren found so likeable? If anything, Darren should be the last person to want to hang around with Chris.

Chris had gone over this whole… “friendship” thing they had going on more times than he could count, and he still didn’t understand what it was about him that Darren found worth sticking around for instead of going back to his friends and the social circles in which he was surely some sort of supreme ruler.

Chris glanced over at Darren, who was sitting in a bean bag chair he brought over to Chris’ dorm room once and that had never left the room since. He was tapping his foot against the ground as he wrote another song, his guitar laid on the floor next to him. Chris didn’t have to ask him not to play it anymore—if Darren saw he was doing something, he didn’t even touch the guitar. Or when Chris wasn’t doing anything and Darren started playing, Chris never interrupted him unless he saw him glancing at the ceiling, which meant that Darren was taking a “mental break” and could probably use some chitchat as distraction.

How had they gotten so good at reading each other in such a short time?

Chris had never been so frustrated with not understanding something. School, he was not that good at, but he knew what he had to do and how far to push himself to make it through, even when Darren teased him that he bit off more than he could chew.

Social relationships? Social interactions? That, he definitely wasn’t good at, especially a social relationship with someone who was his polar opposite.

But Darren, for some reason, was still here. And Chris was still trying to figure out why.

*

Darren was obsessed with Chris.

Not in the creepy, stalker, abusive-partner kind of obsessed, but in a kinder sense of the word, maybe? Or maybe _obsessed_ wasn’t the word he was looking for. He was just… really interested in Chris. Of course, Darren always tried to make freshmen (or, in Chris’ case, a sophomore) feel welcome in their new life in Dalton, but he had never become such close friends with one of them.

Chris was his closest friend in the entire school. And Darren had no idea of what had happened. 

He just… It was weird, really. Ever since he had seen Chris arrive to Dalton a full week before classes even started, he had felt like he needed to become someone this new guy could trust, someone he could rely on, someone he could call his friend. Like some sort of instinct drove him to want to make Chris happy or something.

Darren was usually really good at reading people. He knew when someone he met was honestly a good person or when they were one of those slimy people who wanted to see the world around them burn just because it might be fun to watch the panic, and Chris was definitely a good person. Time and time again, Darren had seen this. 

But it was still strange to him, how much he wanted to be with Chris all the time. 

Not that he, you know, really minded or anything. And he was sure that if he ever breached some sort of boundary or whatever limit Chris might have regarding their interactions together, his best friend would let him know, and Darren would back away as soon as Chris wasn’t comfortable with him. 

Even though he knew it was a possibility, Darren hoped that never happened. Or, at least, he hoped it didn’t happen anytime soon. 

*

“Okay, you know what? I’m done. I’m done, I’m done, I can’t do this anymore and I won’t. Nope, nope, _noooooooope,_ this just isn’t happening.”

Chris sighed to himself and rubbed his eyes when Darren stood up from Chris’ bed and paced around the room, his hands thrown into the air in surrender. 

“C’mon, Darren,” Chris said, patting the Biology textbook in front of him. “You got this, I know you do!”

“Nope,” Darren said, his hands now on his head, on that mop of black curls that Chris had often told him he should cut at least a little bit or Chris was going to do it for him. “I can’t do this. I don’t know why everything got so difficult all of a sudden! I’ve never had so much trouble remembering something.” Then he lay back down on the bed, horizontally so that his head and about half of his body rested on both sides of the mattress. 

Chris had thought that if they started studying for their upcoming Biology test, Darren would know the information as if he had written it himself, as if it were the lyrics for the newest song he had written while being in Chris’ company. But it seemed that, the more they studied, the more difficult it was for Darren to remember what they read. Chris crossed his legs underneath him, and Darren rested his hands over his belly. 

“Do you want to take a break?” Chris asked Darren, who was just staring at the ceiling.

“A break would be nice,” Darren answered, closing his eyes for a second. 

After his friend didn’t say anything anymore, Chris was kind of at a loss of what to do. Usually it was Darren who started their conversations during a break, but it seemed like all Darren wanted to do now was to just… be in silence for a while. Chris had no problem whatsoever with just being together and in silence, but Darren wasn’t like that—he was outspoken and smiley and all the other things that used to freak Chris out before. 

“Hey, Dare,” Chris said, leaning forward a little. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t know where the shortening of Darren’s already short name had come from. It made Chris feel strangely happy, like giving Darren a nickname or calling him by one he already had validated their friendship, gave it more importance somehow. 

Darren turned to look at him, and he had this… strange look on his face that Chris couldn’t quite decipher. It was a combination between tired and disappointed… or maybe that was just Chris’ pessimistic interpretation of Darren’s expression. 

“Yeah,” Darren said, but he didn’t add anything else. 

Chris didn’t know how to react to this new side of Darren he had never seen before, and his entire body started freaking out. He felt his heart pound inside his chest, and if they hadn’t been studying the structure and functions and the cardiac cycle of that particular organ, Chris would think that his own was about to stop working entirely. Was Darren going to say they shouldn’t hang out anymore? Was he tired of Chris? Was he going to bail on him?

 _Stop it,_ Chris chided himself. In this friendship, so far, Darren had not done anything to tell Chris that he was the bailing kind of people who left you on your own after they got bored with you. Nothing about Darren had told Chris that he was someone who would walk out of his life as easily as he had come into it, and he was completely sure that this wasn’t what Darren’s behavior was about. 

Well, he was about ninety percent sure. More like eighty percent, maybe?

 _STOP IT,_ he repeated to himself, trying to fight every instinct of his body that was currently screaming at him, _Run, run, run away and don’t look back._

Suddenly Darren sat up, and he crossed his legs underneath him to sit right across Chris like some sort of black-curly-haired, darker-skinned, slightly taller mirror reflection. He seemed tense, his back and his shoulders straightened as if he had a pole taped to his spine. 

“Can I ask you something?” Darren asked, and Chris felt both calmer and more scared. Darren liked to ask questions a lot, but after how out of himself he had acted today, Chris was trying not to panic. He suddenly felt like he was in his parents’ car again, the day they drove him to Dalton. He felt anxious and nervous and like he was about to throw up. 

“Sure,” he said, hoping that Darren wouldn’t notice he was starting to sweat a little. 

“Do you think it’s weird to say you love your friends?” 

O… kay. Chris had prepared himself for any sort of question Darren might ask him, but this one had never even popped into his mind. “As in, do I think it’s weird to tell the world you love your friends? Because I think that’s natural, you know—”

“No, I mean…” Darren looked down at his lap and took a deep breath. All right, Chris’ mind was starting to go to dark places again, even when the previous combination of words coming out of Darren’s mouth hadn’t meant _Terminate friendship with Chris._ “I think what I wanted to say was, is it weird to tell your friends you love them?”

“Oh,” Chris said, trying to physically force his heart to slow down. “No, I wouldn’t say it’s weird,” he answered. “I mean, I don’t think people do it that often, but I don’t think it’s weird, either.”

“Okay,” Darren said. “I love you.”

Chris’ throat dried up so quickly that it reminded him of those cartoons where a beautiful forest dried up for some reason and it became a desert in less than two seconds. All of his blood rushed up to his head, and he wondered if he could get some sort of heatstroke from blushing. Darren looked like that was what had been troubling him for the past few days, why he couldn’t remember anything they read from the Biology textbook no matter how many times Chris explained it to him. He was smiling softly instead of giving Chris one of those smiles that blinded him sometimes, and he was slightly slouched, like the pole he’d had taped to his back was gone. 

Chris wanted to reply to Darren’s words, but his mind couldn’t form any coherent response to that specific sentence. How was he supposed to answer to that? He… well, yes, he loved Darren, with almost the same intensity as he loved his sister and his parents but definitely not in the same way. 

Now he knew why friends didn’t have the tendency to say _I love you_ to each other. 

But Darren didn’t seem to want any kind of answer from Chris. After a few seconds of silence had passed, almost as if to let the information sink in on both of them, he took the Biology textbook on his lap and continued reading. 

“Maybe we should have a pop quiz after this,” Darren said. “You know, to make sure we remember everything. Well, to make sure I remember everything, ‘cause you’ve got it all covered,” he said with a chuckle. 

“Yeah,” Chris said, still gaping like a fish out of water. “Yeah, that… that sounds good.”

And they went back to studying. And it would’ve been just like any other afternoon they had spent studying for the tests they were going to take together, except for the fact that Chris could no longer look at his best friend without the memory of him saying _I love you_ echoing in his ears. 

*

Chris kind of wanted to write a story about a boy who had just finished his first week of exams during his first year of high school, only to relish about the fact that he had done the exact same thing (with the only variable being that he was in his _second_ year of high school). He felt so satisfied about having finished both his exams and having turned in his short story—which Darren had read when Chris asked for his opinion on it, and his opinion was that Chris was the best storyteller he had ever known, which was ridiculous—for his Creative Writing class and his chronicle for Journalism. He still needed to turn in his paper for Non-Fiction Writing, but that just required him to go to the library and print it out… which he would do perhaps tomorrow.

He hadn’t had the chance to speak to Darren since their Biology test two days ago, and even though he wanted to continue their routine of hanging out almost all the time, Chris still felt slightly awkward after the _I love you_ “incident”, for lack of a better term. 

Okay, so Darren had said he loved him, and Chris hadn’t said it back but that didn’t mean he didn’t love Darren. He did. He just… felt weird saying it. But they were friends, and it was completely natural for friends to love each other. 

And to care and worry, maybe a bit too much, over each other.

So Chris took his cell phone from its permanent spot on his bedside desk and sent Darren a text.

_Chris:  
Hey, Dare. I was just wondering how you were and how you did on the Bio test. But if you don’t want to talk about it, I completely understand._

The few minutes it took for Darren to answer him were almost agonizing. Every possible response Darren could write made Chris breathe heavier and faster, and he just wanted to hear his goddamn phone ring with Darren’s answer, so when his phone dinged, he nearly tripped over his feet to see the text. 

_Darren:  
Christopher Paul Colfer, typing geek, just shortened the word “Biology” to “Bio”? I must say I’m kind of proud. ;)_

Chris couldn’t help the sigh of relief that escaped his mouth, and he tried to ignore the blush he felt when he saw the wink emoji Darren added at the end of his text.

_Chris:  
You’re rubbing off on me, Mr. I-Can-Shorten-Everything-To-Its-Initial._

_Darren:  
Call me Mr. ICSETII. :D_

_Chris:  
How would you even say that?_

_Darren:  
Like… ICK… SET… E. _

_Chris:  
You can’t blame me for opting to call you by your name instead._

_Darren:  
I totally can, but since you’re my best friend, I won’t._

_Chris:  
Honestly though. Are you okay?_

_Darren:  
I’m okay! And I’d really rather we didn’t talk about the B test._

_Chris:  
Okay then._

Darren didn’t answer him after that, but Chris was content simply knowing that his best friend wasn’t dead somewhere. Since he had everything ready for tomorrow—which was Friday, and god, how much Chris loved Fridays, _Jesus_ —he lay down on his belly on the bed to read a book he’d borrowed from the library about writing for comic books. 

At some point, he must’ve started to drowse off a little, because the book he’d been reading was slipping out of his hands, and it startled him awake whenever the book fell down and he had to grab it before it slammed down to the ground. 

“Okay,” Chris said to himself as he rubbed his eyes, “I think that’s enough reading for today.”

He left the book on his night stand and got out of bed to change into his pajamas. Right as he opened the bottom drawer of his closet, there was a knock on the door. 

“Who is it?” he called out, glancing at the door. Who the hell was at his room so late? He’d learned that curfew wasn’t really taken seriously at this school, but he still found it weird that someone was out of his dorm at this hour. 

“It’s me.” 

Oh. 

“Give me a second,” Chris said, willing his entire body to stay calm and relaxed. Darren was coming over to visit him, like he always did. If it was after curfew, it was probably something important. Or maybe Darren just wanted to see Chris and he hadn’t noticed how late it was. Either way, Chris wasn’t going to turn this into an awkward reunion or anything of the sort. They were still friends, they would still hang out together. The… incident hadn’t changed that at all. Surely. 

Chris changed first into his pajamas and then proceeded to open the door. He expected to see Darren grinning or smiling, maybe holding something on his hands he wanted to show Chris, or with his guitar in his hands so that Chris could listen to the newest song he’d written. 

But Darren wasn’t smiling. In fact, he didn’t even look happy. His shoulders were slumped, his chin was against his chest, and his eyebrows were furrowed together. He sighed deeply, like standing outside of Chris’ dorm room was taking him some kind of effort and he was just not up to it right now.

“Hey,” Chris said, opening his door as wide as he could. “Are you okay?” he asked, even though a few hours ago Darren had told him he was. 

“Not really,” Darren said, glancing up at Chris with only his eyes. “Can I come in?” 

Chris stepped aside so that Darren could come inside his room, and he didn’t even stop to consider the fact that he was willingly letting someone into his personal space in the late hours of the night. The only thing he could think about was helping Darren however he could—he’d never seen his best friend so gloomy, and it was honestly scaring him a little.

“What’s the matter?” Chris asked as Darren sat down on his bean bag chair. Darren leaned his head back and threw an arm over his eyes. 

“I think I failed the Biology test,” Darren mumbled, so low that Chris barely heard him. 

“What?” Chris sat down on the edge of his bed so that he could look at Darren, even if Darren couldn’t see him. “But we studied all week! You knew all the material by the end of the day! We even did that pop quiz together, remember?”

“I know, I know!” Darren said, and he stood up from the bean bag chair so quickly that if it had been an actual chair, Chris was sure he would’ve thrown it back to the ground. “And I was sure I had it! But then I started getting to the last questions, which were like _really_ difficult, and I got nervous about all my previous answers and by the time I turned in the test, I could see the _F_ on it already. And now I can’t stop thinking about it and I’ve been turning around on my bed for an hour and I can’t sleep and I figured that talking to you would let me blow off some steam.”

There was no use in telling Darren that he wasn’t going to fail the test. Chris hated whenever he felt like he had done something wrong and his parents tried to cheer him up, it just made him feel worse. He wasn’t going to do the same to Darren now. But what could he do? They had early classes tomorrow and Darren needed to sleep if he wanted to make it to his History lecture at 8:00 AM. Not that anything mortally harmful would happen to Darren if he missed _one_ History class, but Darren would probably beat himself over it for a few weeks. 

Chris lay down on his bed, and he patted the space next to him so that Darren followed suit, which he did. At least if he was lying down, maybe his body would tire out and he would eventually be able to fall asleep. 

“Just don’t think too much about it,” Chris said, perfectly aware that Darren was, most likely, going to think way too much about it. At first, Darren seemed to listen to him, and Chris closed his eyes and heard as his best friend turned on one side and then the other one and then back again, twisting and tossing on his side of the bed, which, now that Chris could fully analyze the situation, was too small for two teens to fit on it. 

So Chris couldn’t say he loved Darren, even if it was something said between two friends, but he could share his bed with said friend. 

“I don’t wanna be worried,” Darren said, apparently giving up on sleeping any time soon. He lay down on his back, his hands on the back of his head, which was tilted up to the ceiling. “But, I mean… God, I feel like I’m really gonna fail.”

“Want me to tell you a story?”

Chris didn’t know where that had come from. He usually wasn’t someone to willingly share his stories, or to make up ones for specific reasons other than whatever assignment he had on his Creative Writing class. His stories simply came to him, and he almost felt forced to write them down whenever he could. But Darren _had_ mentioned that Chris was a brilliant storyteller—why, exactly, Chris wasn’t sure—so maybe one of his stories would distract him enough from his test to let him sleep a few hours, at least. 

Darren turned his head to Chris, and Chris knew from the look on his face that he was already listening. 

“Once upon a time,” Chris started, “there was a boy who lived in a small house on the hill. He loved painting, but more than that, he loved looking at the stars. They looked so beautiful, all those dots glimmering against the sky, so brilliant that the boy wanted to go to space just so that he could touch them. That was his greatest wish.”

Darren turned on his side, and Chris could feel his face heating up. He usually liked having his space, even when he was with Darren, but right now, he didn’t mind as much as he often did. 

“So the boy decided that he would go to space and touch the stars, even if it was the last thing he ever did. He built a rocket ship and named it after one of his favorite constellations, Delphinus. He flew up, up, up on his rocket ship,” said Chris, his hand in front of him pretending to be the rocket ship, “but he reached a point in the sky where he couldn’t keep flying, and the rocket ship went down. The boy built ship after ship, naming each of them after every single constellation he knew: Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Orion, Andromeda… But each rocket ship he built ended up on the ground. After some time, the boy thought it would be better to give up and go back to painting.”

“Is this a sad story, Chris?” Darren asked, and for the first time in the last few minutes, he was smiling and his eyelids were drooping. 

“Shh,” Chris said, waving a hand in the air, barely glancing at Darren before he went back to look at the ceiling. He could almost see the stars he was talking about on it. “I’m not finished yet. So the boy went back to painting, except that now he decided to fill as many canvases as he could with paintings of the stars he had wanted to touch so badly. His paintings were known all throughout the world, and the boy realized that he might not be good at building rocket ships, and he might never get to touch the stars, but at least he could share what he loved with the world. And maybe that was the only thing that mattered. So maybe you do fail the test, and maybe Biology isn’t your strong point or anything, but you love to write music, Darren, and when you’re a famous songwriter—because you’ll be famous, Dare, I know it—you won’t even remember your failed Biology test.”

He thought he was going to hear his best friend laugh, or say something as equally cheesy as Chris’ stupid rocket ship story (god, why had he made up such a corny story?), but Darren didn’t say anything. 

“Dare?” Chris turned his head to Darren, and he covered his mouth with his hand so that he wouldn’t laugh out loud. “You fell asleep,” he whispered, though it seemed obvious: his best friend was deeply asleep, and if Chris went quiet, he could hear him softly snoring, like he didn’t want to make any sound, even in his dreams. Chris would’ve considered getting a blanket or something to cover them both, but his room was warm enough as it was, so he simply got comfortable on his side of the bed and prepared himself to go to sleep.

“Good night, Dare,” Chris said, eyes already closed.

Although Chris didn’t have any dreams, unbeknownst to him, Darren dreamed of them traveling on a space ship, like two tiny aliens, as they explored the galaxy and touched the stars. 

(On Monday, Darren excitedly told Chris that he had passed his Biology test. With a D+, but still.)

*

Ever since the night Darren fell asleep on Chris’ dorm room—on his bed, no less—Darren had been a lot more… affectionate with Chris. A lot more touchy. Darren was always up on Chris’ personal space as it was, but now it almost seemed like he reached out to touch Chris whenever he could, like he wanted to make sure that Chris wasn’t a mass hallucination and actually existed in and of his own. He would bump their shoulders together, or sometimes grab Chris’ wrist, or wrap an arm around his shoulders, or lock their arms together, or stand on his tiptoes to lean on Chris’ head. 

Chris… preferred having his personal space. He had grown used to Darren invading his room and getting too close for Chris’ usual comfort, but Chris actually… kind of liked it. He liked having his own realization of Darren being real and not a desperate attempt from Chris’ mind to make him believe he was somewhat important to someone who didn’t share his last name. 

At first he was worried that his classmates would say something about him and Darren being so touchy-feely with one another, but no one even blinked an eye in their direction. Of course, they had known Darren a year more than Chris had, so maybe this wasn’t a surprise for them. Maybe Darren tended to be an affectionate person with everyone—perhaps with some more than with others—and no one thought too much about it. 

Good. Chris hated to be the center of attention. 

There was only one problem: whenever Chris saw Darren, his entire body seemed to freeze for a second. He felt his throat close up and his heart pound faster and harder inside his ribcage and his palms start to get all sweaty and gross. 

He tried searching for what might be causing this weird phenomenon in his body, but Google threw at him a list of illnesses and chronic diseases that Chris highly doubted were his case. 

Fucking Google. 

*

Darren had a problem. 

Well, it wasn’t so much a problem as something he wanted to deal with but didn’t know how. 

He couldn’t look at Chris without the words _hey Chris hi I love you I think you’re amazing did you know you’re amazing ‘cause I do I love you you’re wonderful hi Chris I hope you’re happy ‘cause I want you to be happy I love you Chris_ running around his head like an alarm he couldn’t just hit the Snooze button on. 

And to be honest, it was starting to freak him out. 

It was no secret that Darren was an affectionate person. Ever since he was little, one of the sentences he said the most was _I love you_ —to his parents, to his friends, to his older brother Chuck, to everyone he cared about and… well, loved. He wasn’t someone who kept his feelings bottled up or refused himself the pleasure of saying things that he knew were true. 

But he had never felt the urge, the need, to say I love you every time he saw the same person, who was, in this case, Chris.

And it wasn’t just the fact that he had to physically restrain himself from saying these words to his best friend after he had already done it once—every time Chris entered into Darren’s line of sight, Darren immediately became happier. He wanted to embrace Chris and run his hands through his hair and help him in any way he could and just ensure Chris’ own happiness. He felt like he was about to have a heart attack, his heart and breathing speeding up until he was afraid he was going to pass out, except it wasn’t a bad sensation at all. In fact, he loved feeling the way he did whenever he saw Chris or whenever he was with Chris. 

Why was this _happening to him?_

Darren usually recurred to his parents whenever he needed help. And he definitely needed help with this… situation he was currently in. But he didn’t think his parents would know what was happening to their teenage/young adult son.

Chuck, though, would. 

Maybe. 

*

Chris was in the middle of an essay for his French History class when an unexpected thought suddenly struck him, completely out of nowhere.

_I have a crush on Darren._

He leaned back on his chair and stared at the halfway done essay typed on his computer screen without remembering what he had been writing. 

He had a crush on Darren. He had an enormous crush on his best friend. That was what had been causing his sweaty palms and his lack of control over the speed and force of his heartbeats and the loss of breath he went through whenever Darren was close to him. 

Oh, god.

Oh, _god._

Chris had a _fucking_ crush on Darren. 

He leaned his elbows on his computer and held his head between his hands. Oh, god, this was exactly what he’d been afraid of: doing something that would destroy the only real friendship relationship he had ever had. And what had his entire body decided to do? Get a fucking crush on his best friend, who probably only ever saw him as exactly that.

 _Okay, okay, stop,_ Chris thought to himself. He had to consider his options. Perhaps he could just… maybe… tell Darren about it? He could simply say that he had developed a tiny, teeny tiny, itty-bitty crush on him, and he just wanted things to be clear between them, and he didn’t expect Darren to feel the same way about him, he just wanted Darren to hopefully not freak out on him. 

_Oh, god._

Just as he was about to text Darren to ask him if they could talk—hopefully through their phones, because Chris wouldn’t be able to say the words out loud without choking to death on thin air—he received a text from Darren.

_Darren:  
Hey, do you think we could talk? Nothing wrong, I just wanna talk._

Chris’ mind went through every single possible scenario for what Darren would like to talk about. Darren never asked Chris if they could talk; he just showed up at Chris’ dorm room and knocked on the door and almost always let himself in. There was something definitely wrong. 

Oh, Jesus. Had Darren realized how Chris felt about him? Was he about to break off their friendship? 

Chris took a deep breath before he simply responded Darren with a _Yeah, sure._ There would be no problem in chatting with his best friend—if they weren’t hanging out together, text messages were how they communicated with each other—, except that Darren was coming over and he would probably expect Chris to speak whatever he wanted to say. Would he agree to let Chris type out his side of their conversation on his phone so that he wouldn’t faint in front of Darren?

The knock on his door a few minutes later made him jump out of his chair. 

“Come in!” Chris said before he could really stop to think about his decision. 

As soon as Darren opened the door and walked inside his room, Chris realized there was _definitely_ something wrong. Darren had a nervous smile on his face and his arms were crossed over his chest and he was doing everything he could to avoid eye contact with Chris. 

Chris wished he had at least mentally prepared himself for the possibility of this happening.

“Hey,” Chris said, because Darren, so far, had only shot him nervous smiles and tiny, almost accidental glances. 

“Hey,” Darren said. “So, um…” He turned to look at the bed and then signaled to it, as if he were asking permission to sit down on it. Chris could only nod, and he tried not to think about what Darren’s nervous behavior meant. Darren never asked him for permission to sit on his bed anymore, and Chris would actually prefer it if he didn’t do it now. 

For a few seconds, neither of them said anything, and Chris kind of wondered if Darren could hear how hard his heart was beating from across the room. 

“Um,” Darren started, his hands on his knees and his eyes on the ground. “So I have something to tell you.”

 _Here it goes,_ Chris thought, trying to control his breathing and to hold back the tears that would surely start forming before Darren finished talking. Darren exhaled through his mouth, which only made Chris more nervous. 

“Before I say anything,” Darren said, holding his hands up as if he expected Chris to jump at him or attack him or something along those lines, “I just want you to know that you’re my best friend.”

Yep. This was definitely the end. Chris had seen too many rom-coms with his family to know that most break-up speeches began in a similar way. Except that this speech was to break their friendship up. 

“And I care about you and I love you.”

Oh, god. If hearing Darren say _I love you_ before had made his throat dry up and all of his blood rush up to his head, it was ten times worse now. Chris actually felt like he was about to have a heart attack. 

“Uh-huh,” Chris said, unable to think of any other expression.

“And you’re in no way obliged to continue being friends with me…”

Wait. What?

“I’m just… just…” Darren exhaled again, this time louder and harder, like he was trying to vomit the words out because there was no other way he could speak otherwise. “Just hear me out before you decide to do anything?”

“Okay,” Chris answered. Well, at least now that he had no idea of what was going on inside Darren’s mind, he was confused instead of scared and about to hyperventilate. 

“Okay,” Darren said. “Here it goes.” This time, he inhaled and let the following stream of combined letters shoot out of his vocal chords. “I talked to my brother about some things I’ve been thinking about and some things I’ve been feeling a lot lately, and he made me realize that I like you and I think I have a crush on you and I wasn’t going to tell you but I felt like you needed to know because I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us and now I’m probably rambling, I’m sorry about that, I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous as I am right now, and right now, I’m just hoping that you don’t kick me out of your room because you’re my best friend and I can’t stand the thought of not being your friend anymore.” 

Then he leaned back on Chris’ bed and covered his eyes with his hands—he actually kind of threw himself back, as if all the energy in his body had left him and he couldn’t keep himself standing… or even sitting.

Chris kind of wished he was on the bed to do the same thing now. If he leaned back on his chair too much, the chair would fall and he would crash down to the ground and he would make an idiot out of himself in front of the boy he had a crush on.

The boy he had a crush on and who actually had a crush on him, too. 

Darren Criss, the boy Chris had realized he had a crush on, had a crush on _him,_ too. 

Could Chris have a heart attack from the immense amount of serotonin and endorphins and dopamine his body was producing at the moment? Could being this happy give him a heart attack? He was so happy that he was in some sort of shock, unable to move, to say anything, to get up from his chair and throw his arms around Darren and cling to him and stay like that for a few minutes.

“I like you and I have a crush on you, too.”

Darren uncovered his eyes and sat up on the bed, and his entire… aura had changed. He was gripping the edge of the bed, his eyes were bright, and although he wasn’t smiling, he looked almost hopeful. 

“You do?” he asked, his voice small and soft. 

“I was going to ask you if we could talk when you sent me your text,” Chris said, and suddenly he felt the way Darren had looked during the _I love you_ incident. He felt better now that it was out in the open, now that there was an explanation for how his body tended to physically react when he was with Darren. “And I was really scared that you wouldn’t want us to be friends anymore, but I wanted you to know anyway.”

“Oh,” Darren said, and he put his hand to his chest. “Oh, thank god,” he said as he sighed in relief, and the smile that overtook his face was once again the kind of smile that blinded Chris, the kind of smile he was so used to and liked seeing on his best friend’s face so much. “So we really like each other.”

“I think we do,” Chris said. He couldn’t give Darren the same kind of smile Darren threw around all the time, but he could offer him one, at least. Except that when he tried to smile, a giggle bubbled out of him, and he covered his mouth before Darren could hear it.

But Darren heard it, and he giggled himself and covered his eyes and he mumbled, “God, you’re so cute.”

And Chris thought he was really going to die because _Darren thought he was cute._ He usually would’ve found it somehow diminishing, but he didn’t mind when it came to Darren. 

“So this doesn’t change anything?” Chris asked, trying not to fear Darren’s answer. “Between us?”

“I don’t think it does,” Darren replied. “I mean… I guess it _could_ change, but not exactly in a bad way?”

Chris felt his throat close up again, but not in the same way it had when he had no idea of what was causing it. Was… was Darren suggesting that… was he actually suggesting…?

“Do you want it to change?”

Darren blushed, and Chris had the sudden urge to say that he was adorable, that the mere sight of him blushing made Chris’ face flush. “Do you?” he asked Chris. 

The thing was that Chris didn’t know. Did he want things to change between them? He didn’t think they’d be much different from how they were now, although he really couldn’t know for sure. He had never been in a relationship before, and he didn’t know how it worked between two friends who started… dating. 

Chris, for the first time during this entire conversation, stood up from his chair and went to sit on his bed, his back leaning against the wall, his legs stretched on his side of the mattress. Exactly like the night Darren slept over, he patted the space next to him so that Darren could sit beside him. 

“Maybe things will change without us realizing it,” Chris said once Darren was sitting by his side in the same position he was. 

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” said Darren. 

“It’s kind of scary, though,” Chris admitted. “Isn’t it?” He didn’t know much about… romantic relationships, and he wasn’t entirely sure this would really become one. He just knew that… that Darren made him feel things he never thought he would feel. Good things. 

“Yeah,” Darren agreed. “It kind of is.”

“But it’s a good kind of scary,” said Chris hurriedly, and it was, it really was. 

Darren narrowed his eyes at him, and then he smiled. “How’s a good kind of scary?”

Chris thought of a scenario that could explain what he meant. He thought about using a horror house as an example, but he’d never liked those. They didn’t scare him, most of the time he just found them really annoying. He had only ever gone to them because Hannah liked them, and he’d sometimes act scared or scream so that she could laugh and tell him it was only for show. He started thinking about theme parks, and he found the perfect example.

“It’s like when you go on a roller coaster,” he began. Darren snuggled closer, and suddenly Chris could feel his breath on his face. He took a few seconds to regain his composure and organize his thoughts before he started talking. “You’re waiting in line, and when it’s finally your turn, you run to the front row, because it’s where you can see everything. But even if you can see everything that’s coming before it does, you still feel your stomach drop when you start to go up.” He put his arm between them to mimic the slow movement of the roller coaster as it ascended. 

“You’re preparing yourself for the fall, and you want it to just come already so that you can get it over with because you feel like you can’t breathe, but at the same time, you want for the rise to last as long as possible. So you close your eyes and open them again because you want to see it; you want to see the moment when the roller coaster starts tipping down,” he said as he turned his arm down, “and suddenly you’re screaming your throat raw and it’s like your entire life has led up to that exact second. And once that first fall is behind you, you can breathe again.”

He lowered his arm to rest next to Darren’s.

“And when the ride is over the first thing you want to do is get in line so that you can do it all over again. That’s the kind of good scary I feel.” As soon as he finished his explanation, he thought that he’d never said anything more stupid in his entire life. Had he even gotten his point across? Had Darren understood him at all? “I don’t know, I’m probably not making any sense—”

Darren’s smile turned into a grin, and he took one of Chris’ hands to touch their fingertips together. Chris felt a rush of adrenaline coursing through his body, and he shyly interlaced their fingers, only a little. 

“I think I know what you mean,” Darren said. “It’s a good kind of scary to me, too.”

“So,” Chris said, glancing down at their entwined fingers. He couldn’t look at Darren and think straight at the same time without feeling like the breath left him, like his heart was a machine that could go haywire any second. “We’re… um…” God, he felt like he couldn’t even speak. 

“We’re, like, in this good kind of scary thing together,” Darren said, saving him from the embarrassment of making a fool out of himself in front of his… “Right?”

“Yeah,” Chris nodded. “Like… like a couple, right?”

The word brought him an overwhelming sensation of relief, like he had been drowning, not even knowing where up and down was, and Darren had pulled him up to the surface. That was the way things could change between them, in case they did, and Chris actually found himself looking forward to find out if they would.

Darren bit his lip, trying to contain his grin. “Like a couple,” he confirmed, and Chris wanted to laugh and scream, because this amazing boy, this wonderful boy, this boy that Chris loved so much (even though he still hadn’t found the courage to say it), actually liked him like Chris liked him, too. And now they were a couple—they were _together_ together, as boyfriends. 

Holy shit, Chris felt like he was on that metaphorical roller coaster, and he wanted to throw up but he wanted to smile and laugh, too. This relationship had just started—he was in a relationship, he had a _boyfriend_ —and Darren was already being the end of him. Maybe Darren had been the end of him since the day they met. 

But he honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. 

*

“I think Marco’s having a Halloween party on Friday,” Darren said the Tuesday before Halloween, while they were in the library. Marco was one of his junior friends that Chris had met a couple of times but had never really talked to, though Chris could still tell he was a nice guy. “And he invited us. It’s gonna be on the gym, since the school would rather we make a mess here than leave campus.”

“Okay,” Chris replied. “Do you want to go?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to go,” Darren answered. “I think it might be fun? I mean, it’s Halloween, and I think Marco’s doing this costume contest, in case you’re interested.”

“Oh, that does sound tempting,” said Chris. He actually loved Halloween, but most of all, he loved the prospect of making his Halloween costume himself instead of buying the already made costume from Wal-Mart or Amazon. He loved going overboard with his ideas, and Halloween was the only time of the year in which Chris allowed himself to be any kind of messy. Sometimes he still found traces of facial paint in his stuff back home. 

Then again, with how busy he had ben lately, all he wanted to do on Friday was stay in his dorm room and fall asleep watching movies on his laptop. 

Then again, this was the first Halloween he would spend with his _boyfriend_ , and it was an opportunity he didn’t want to let pass. 

“Maybe we could even match costumes,” Chris said, unaware that he had spoken the words out loud instead of quietly, like he had wanted to. He turned to stare at Darren, his face already starting to flush, and he realized that Darren was blushing as well, if only less than he was. 

“You want us to wear matching costumes?” Darren asked, and the corners of his lips perked up in a smile. 

“Only if you want.”

“I’d love to!” Darren said, his smile replaced by a grin. “That’d be fantastic! Did you have any ideas in mind?”

“Um…” Chris bit his lip. “Not at the moment, but I can text you some ideas later on? I don’t think it’ll be anything terribly complicated, so that we can get it done before Friday.”

“Okay.” Darren was still grinning when he stood up from the chair he was sitting on at their table and wrapped his arms around Chris. Chris embraced Darren back, leaning his chin on his shoulder, and he was grateful that their hugs were a few seconds longer now—they gave him the chance to relish in the fact that this boy was… his, in a way. 

That Chris could keep him for now. 

It had been a few days since Chris’ roller coaster metaphor, and he still hadn’t really grasped the whole _Darren and I are dating now_ concept yet; it really didn’t feel much different between them, except that they had both done a lot of more giggling lately. Chris would glance over at Darren in Biology or in any other class they shared and Darren would look back at him before they both burst into joyful giggling, trying to keep quiet from the teacher. It was kind of thrilling, really, wanting to show everyone that he was now _in a relationship_ , but at the same time not wanting to tell anyone and have everything still be a secret that was only theirs. 

“So I’ll talk to you later,” Darren said when they broke away from their embrace. 

“Yes, of course,” Chris added. He watched Darren leave the library, and he didn’t even try to get his heartbeat to slow down the second Darren turned his head around to wave goodbye at him with one of his blinding smiles. 

Now he had to think of amazing matching costumes for them. He didn’t care so much about winning the costume contest as he cared about actually wearing matching costumes with his boyfriend. His _boyfriend._

Although yes, he still really wanted to win that costume contest. 

Except that, on Friday, he realized his idea had gone awfully wrong. 

While talking about ideas for their matching costumes, Darren had mentioned they could go as Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, which would give them the opportunity to be absolute dorks on one of the greatest nights of the year and show their love for one of the greatest book series of the last twenty years at the same time. But after thinking it over, Chris had argued that it was way too easy, that he appreciated the sentiment but he also wanted something a little more challenging. He then had suggested they could go as R2D2 and C3PO, from _Star Wars_ , because it would force them to get original with the costumes. 

Darren had clearly texted that it was a great idea, and he was all up for being C3PO if Chris wanted to be R2D2. Chris had ended their conversation absolutely sure that they had agreed to dress up as Star Wars characters. He was absolutely sure of it. Even though they had gone back to chatting about Harry Potter, Chris was completely sure that they had agreed to be robots for Marco’s Halloween party.

So when, on Friday night, as he stood in his R2D2 costume—which was white pants, boots, gloves, and a long-sleeved white shirt with splotches of blue, black and gray to mimic the robot’s lights and buttons, as well as a white hat with blue stripes to resemble the top of his head—he opened the door of his room to find Darren on the other side dressed up in full Harry Potter attire, no one could blame him for being confused out of his mind. 

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one, and he and Darren stood on each side of the door as they stared at each other and tried to make sense of their mismatched costumes after they had been planned with anticipation. 

“I thought we said Harry Potter!”

“I thought we said Star Wars!”

Since they both said it at the same time, Chris would have probably found it hilarious if they were on some kind of sitcom. But they weren’t, and he didn’t find it hilarious. 

“I’m not going to deny that you’re the perfect Harry Potter,” Chris said, then he added, “after Daniel Radcliffe, of course—”

“And you’re the best human R2D2 I’ve ever seen,” Darren smiled, which now was both endearing and infuriating.

“But we were supposed to be RD2D and C3PO!”

“I swear we were gonna be Harry and Ron!”

Chris stood sideways so that Darren could walk into his room, because he didn’t want to have this conversation in the middle of the hallway, where anyone could hear them. Darren sat down on the edge of the bed and Chris took his usual spot on his wheeled chair. 

“It looks like we’ve reached an impasse,” Darren said, and Chris couldn’t hold back the laugh that escaped his mouth. 

“I don’t think this is an impasse as much as a communication mishap,” Chris muttered. 

“I know,” Darren argued. “I just wanted to use that word.”

Chris laughed again, and he looked down at his R2D2 costume and then at Darren’s Harry Potter impersonation. “You _are_ the perfect Harry.”

“And your costume is honestly out of this world.”

“So what do we do?” 

Darren leaned back on his hands on the mattress. Chris took the chance to admire the scar he’d painted on his forehead and the Gryffindor tie he was wearing, along the round glasses with no actual lenses resting on the bridge of his nose. He looked so cute that Chris just wanted to hug him for the rest of the night. 

“We can still go to Marco’s party, if you want,” Darren finally said. “I’ll protect you against Death Eaters and you’ll protect me against the Empire.”

Chris laughed out loud again, and his cheeks and throat kind of hurt from laughing so much at Darren’s silly jokes. Really, the only thing that had changed between them was the title they used to refer to each other; otherwise, they were still the same boys being sort of idiotically dorky together. 

“Do you want to go?” Chris asked. 

Darren took a deep breath before letting it out through his nose. He didn’t look like he was in the mood to go to a costume party, and quite frankly, Chris wasn’t in the mood, either. It was as if their Halloween spirit had deflated during their conversation. 

“Do you have any other plans for tonight?” Darren questioned. 

“Well,” Chris said, “I had actually planned on watching movies until I fell asleep. I guess it could turn into a scary movie marathon, since we’re already dressed up for the occasion.”

The grin Darren had on his face was more an evil smirk than a grin, and Chris was only a tiny bit ashamed to admit he found that look on Darren quite attractive.

“Wanna go scare whoever’s working the night shift at OXXO tonight to get some snacks?”

“I don’t think they’ll be terrified by a robot and a wizard, but sure, let’s go.”

The guy working the night shift at OXXO was, as Chris predicted, not scared at all by their costumes. He did compliment them, though, and Chris was just glad he didn’t make any comment about how ridiculous they surely looked. They bought sodas, candy packets, and some bags of chips to eat during their Halloween movie marathon before they made their way back to Chris’ dorm room.

Chris and Darren spent the entire night curled up on Chris’ bed, staring at the laptop screen in front of them, as the computer played horror movie after horror movie. Chris was surprised by the fact that Darren was as much of a scaredy cat as he was when they both jumped and screamed at the same parts during their marathon. 

“We would be horrible in a haunted house,” Darren said at some point during _The Babadook._

“Why’s that?” Chris asked, holding the covers of the bed up to his nose as Darren cuddled closer to him and slightly fought him for the covers. 

“Because we’d both be too scared to investigate the mysterious sounds coming from the ominous basement,” answered Darren. 

“Don’t even mention it,” Chris whispered as the background music in the movie stopped. 

“I’d probably leave you to die in a zombie apocalypse, if we’re being honest,” Darren mumbled, his voice muffled by the covers. 

“Good,” Chris added, “I would do the same.”

Then they both screamed as the Babadook fell upon Amelia. 

Needless to say, Darren slept over Chris’ room, just like he had after their Biology test. If either one of them was going to be attacked by evil entities during the night, they wanted to make sure that at least the other one knew what had happened to them. 

*  
They were studying for their last Chemistry pop quiz before Thanksgiving break when Darren sprung this on him: “Hey, so, um, do you, like, wanna go out on a date with me? After Thanksgiving break?”

Chris nearly let go of the pencil he had on his hand. He looked up from the text book they’d been studying from, and he saw that Darren was still looking down, though there was a blush on his cheeks and his expression was tense, like his entire body was on hold, waiting to hear what Chris would say. 

Even though they had spent Halloween night watching movies until the prospect of moving two inches was too scary for both of them, neither of them had thought of it as a date. Of course, Darren had been so close to Chris that their cheeks had been practically glued together the entire night, and maybe at some point Chris had hidden in Darren’s chest as he watched the laptop screen between his fingers, but it still hadn’t exactly counted as a date. Not as far as Chris knew. 

He realized that he still hadn’t answered Darren—his boyfriend, his boyfriend, his _boyfriend_ —who still looked like he was some sort of coiled wire, expecting his answer. 

“Yeah,” Chris said, and suddenly Darren was sparkling again, grinning and making the entire room light up around him, the way he always did when he was around Chris. Oh, god, he lit up like a lamp because of _Chris._

“Really?” Darren asked, his grin so wide that it reached the corners of his face and it made his eyes scrunch up; like he couldn’t believe Chris was actually agreeing to this.

“Yeah,” Chris repeated, and he was smiling, too. How could he not, when Darren was looking at him with that expression? “Yes, of course, I’d love that.”

“Okay,” said Darren. “Okay. Okay!” 

Chris couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled out of him. “Where are we going?”

“Um, I have no idea yet,” Darren answered, and when he laughed in embarrassment, he was blushing again. Chris suddenly had the urge to kiss him, but that scared him more than the metaphorical roller coaster; he wasn’t even sure if kissing Darren was a good kind of scary. For now it was just scary. “I couldn’t think past asking you to go out on a date with me. I mean, I was afraid you’d say no or something.”

Chris had to look down at his Chemistry text book and bite his lip to keep himself from chuckling again. “Why would you think I’d say no?”

“I don’t know.” He smiled up at Chris. “I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about that now. I’ll think of some great place to show you, you’ll see!”

They went back to studying for their test, but Chris couldn’t really focus on what he was reading any more. 

*

Three days back home weren’t enough to really enjoy being with his family, but Chris wasn’t complaining all that much. Although he loved being at Dalton, he also loved a little break every once in a while, and he was just glad that moving to another city to continue his education didn’t mean he had to miss out on going back home once in a while. 

His mother had picked him up at a bus station in Fresno, even though he had told her he could perfectly take another bus to Clovis. 

“You’ve been gone for three months and you think I’m not going to pick you up?” she had told him as soon as he climbed inside the passenger seat of the car, with Hannah getting on the backseat. 

“Thank you, Mom,” Chris said in the end, and his mom caressed the back of his head. 

“We’ve missed you, you know,” she said, both of her hands on the steering wheel. “We know you’re busy with school, so we don’t talk to you as often as I wish we could.”

“That’s fine, Mom, don’t worry.” Chris took out his cell phone from his pocket and sent a quick message to Darren, letting him know he was on his way to his house. 

_Darren:  
OK. Take care and have fun!  <3 _

Chris bit his lip to hold back the grin about to take over his mouth.

During the first day he was home, he toyed with the idea of telling his family about Darren. Well, they knew about Darren, Chris had mentioned him in all the conversations he’d had with them on the phone, but he hadn’t mentioned that they were now going out. Could he actually use that term if they hadn’t gone out on a date yet? Darren had said they would after Thanksgiving break and hopefully before Christmas break, and Chris didn’t want to think too much about it because the mere idea of going out with Darren on an actual date made him both excited and terrified at the same time. 

In the end, he decided not to tell them anything yet. Maybe he could do it the next time he came home. Or the time after that. Or at the end of the school year, when he was home for summer break. Or maybe he could simply wait until he was out of high school to tell them that he was in a relationship with someone. 

Okay, Chris was thinking way too far ahead. He and Darren might not even be a couple by the time he was out of high school, given that Darren would be finishing his first year of college at the same time.

Chris was _definitely_ not going to think about that right now. He wasn’t going to panic about hypothetical futures—he was just going to enjoy the present, in which he and Darren were together. 

Thanksgiving Day was calm yet a little bit chaotic, because apparently, having Chris home for the first time in a few months was enough for his mother to go crazy about dinner. He and Hannah watched their father tell her that he didn’t have to make a huge deal out of it—Chris even echoed his dad’s words so that his mom would believe him—but she was having none of it. Her baby was back and they were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner he would never forget.

Chris was helping his dad set up the table when he got a text message from Darren.

_Darren:  
Went to the grocery store to buy some plastic cups for dinner and I saw this poor dog just wandering around the building._

_Darren:  
I’m buying him or her a Pedigree pouch._

Chris laughed at the messages—only Darren had such a kind soul to feed a stray dog—and quickly typed out a response.

_Chris:  
Well, he or she is going to follow you around all day long._

_Darren:  
Cool! I’ve always wanted a dog! :D_

He rolled his eyes and hid his phone back inside his pocket to go have dinner. He kind of expected both his parents to bombard him with questions about school once they had all sat down at the table, but things were actually pretty calm as they started eating.

“Have you gotten that book you were looking for yet?” Hannah was the first person to talk to him during dinner. “The one with the two schools and the girls against the boys and all that?”

“Not yet,” Chris answered her. “Maybe I’ll wait until Christmas, or until the last book comes out so that I don’t have to wait for it.”

“That reminds me,” said his mother, “do you like your Creative Writing classes? I remember you were excited for those!”

“Yeah, they’re great,” he said. “I like my Non-Fiction class more than I thought I would. And I’m taking French History, too. I really like everything at school, even if it might all be heavy sometimes.”

“The more credits you have now, the better,” said his dad, and Chris really couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t want to spend his senior year collapsing from impossible amounts of schoolwork just because he didn’t have enough credits to go to college. He’d rather collapse every other week now, especially because now he and Darren could collapse together in his room and enjoy watching a movie. 

Chris took a deep breath to still his accelerated heartbeats. He didn’t want to blush in front of his family out of nowhere and have his parents ask him what was the matter. Hannah looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, and even though she could probably see the beginning of a flush on his face, she didn’t say anything. But he was sure she was going to pester him about it later. 

After some more chitchat from his parents, they finished dinner, and his mom insisted that they all sit down to watch the Thanksgiving specials on TV. Chris had never really liked the traditionally cheesy shows that aired on TV during Thanksgiving, but he hadn’t seen his family in months and he thought that he owed them that much. Besides, Hannah always commented during the programming, and her wit always made him laugh. 

During the commercial breaks, Chris would sneakily send texts to Darren or answer to the ones Darren sent him. 

_Darren:  
Oh, this is my favorite FRIENDS Thanksgiving episode! I mean, really, Brad Pitt being a douchebag? When are you ever gonna come across THAT opportunity again?_

_Chris:  
I have to say that’s my SECOND favorite episode. My favorite Thanksgiving episode is The One with the Football. The sibling rivalry between Monica and Ross is one of the highlights of the show, I think._

_Darren:  
I also really like The One Where Ross Gets High! Especially because of those sixty-ish seconds of Ross and Monica screaming out each other’s secrets.  <3_

_Chris:  
To be honest, I’ve always kind of wanted to reenact that scene with Hannah, but lots of screaming get her kind of anxious. She’s willing to try it out, but we always forget about it._

_Darren:  
Chuck and I did it one year! Mom was very confused as to why, but Dad laughed his ass off. It was great, ngl. :D_

_Chris:  
I demand we reenact it without laughing, just so that I get to do it._

_Darren:  
Without laughing? So, first one to laugh loses?_

_Chris:  
I didn’t plan it as any kind of competitive challenge, but sure. Bring it on. ;)_

_Darren:  
Oooohhhh, Christopher Paul Colfer is challenging me to an in-character performance. All right, I accept your challenge!_

_Darren:  
Oops, commercial break’s over. Ttyl!  <3_

_Chris:  
Talk to you later, Mr. ICSETTI.  <3_

That night, after the Thanksgiving Specials marathon was over, Chris lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling of his room, and he couldn’t help but think over how many things had happened to him since the last time he had slept in this bed. He thought that maybe Hannah would want to talk to him about his weird blush during dinner, but she only came into his room to wish him goodnight, and she didn’t mention anything regarding his behavior at the table. 

Maybe she hadn’t noticed after all. Or maybe Chris wasn’t giving her enough credit, and she was waiting until _he_ decided to talk with her about it. She had always been more intuitive than Chris or their parents believed. 

He and Darren exchanged a few more texts before they bid each other goodnight. 

_Darren:  
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much. If I don’t make it back to school, you can thank my mom._

_Chris:  
Well, I hope you don’t die, but if you do, at least it will have been thanks to your mother’s food and not because the Babadook got you._

_Darren:  
… thank you VERY MUCH, Chris. Now I’ll sleep with the lights turned on and jump at any tiny sound in my room. I kinda wish you were here to protect me with your robot skills…_

_Chris:  
What are you talking about? You’re Harry Potter! If anything, you can take care of yourself._

_Darren:  
AAWWWWW thank you, Chris.  <3 <3 <3 _

_Chris:  
No problem. :) Goodnight, Dare.  <3_

_Darren:  
G’night, Chris.  <3_

The next day was pretty much uneventful, except that his mother got kind of emotional because Chris was leaving them again and they wouldn’t see him until Christmas break.

“It’s only a few weeks,” he said as they all drove him to the bus station in Fresno. “It won’t be as long before you have to go pick me up again.” Then he turned to look at Hannah. “Are you going to miss me, too?”

“Not really,” Hannah said. “I was getting used to having the house to myself.”

“You do not have the house to yourself, sweetheart, what about us?” asked his mother while Chris tried not to laugh as loudly as he wanted to. 

The second he stepped inside the bus that would take him back to San Francisco, his phone started _dinging_ with text after text after text, all from his boyfriend.

His boyfriend. His _boyfriend._ The word made Chris giddy—it made him want to say it out loud or mouth it just to feel his muscles form that particular combination of vowels and consonants. Sometimes he forgot that that was what they were now, and the realization of it made him want to jump around in circles while screaming joyfully at the top of his lungs. 

_Darren:  
Remember the dog I fed with the Pedigree pouch yesterday?_

_Darren:  
Turns out that it was a girl. IT’S a girl._

_Darren:  
And it turns out she kinda followed me home?_

_Darren:  
She followed me home and Chuck tried to chase her away and it kinda worked for a few hours? But then…_

_Chris:  
I’m not going to say “I told you so” just because I’m not that kind of person, but…_

_Darren:  
I know, I know… and today I woke up and took out the trash and there she was, right outside my house!_

_Darren:  
My dad didn’t let us keep her. :( Mom had no problem, but Dad said it wasn’t fair that they’d have to take care of her while I was at school._

_Darren:  
It’s not my fault that Dalton doesn’t let us have pets!_ (He had added an emoji of a crying face that Chris couldn’t help laughing at.)

_Darren:  
Do you think that if I talked to the principal, he would let me keep her? Hm…_

_Chris:  
I really don’t think Principal Morrison will let you keep her here._

_Darren:  
Ugh, you’re right… dammit! Why must you always be right, Christopher Paul Colfer?_

*

Chris realized that, for having already lived a few months in San Francisco, he didn’t really know any place other than Dalton Academy, the OXXO across campus, and the Laundromat across the other street. Darren had grown up his entire life here, and if anyone could show him around town, it was definitely him. Not that Chris wanted anyone else to do it, anyway. 

“I was thinking that maybe we could go to a park?” Darren said. “I mean, I’d love to take you to so many places, but it’s our first date and I don’t really wanna overwhelm you or anything.”

Oh, god, it was their first date. 

It was their first date and Chris had absolutely no idea of what he was doing. 

Even though they had _somewhat_ held hands before (except not really, their fingers had slightly brushed together and interlaced _even more slightly_ together and okay, yes, maybe they _had_ held hands before, sue them), Chris was nervous about it happening again. If they held hands now, it would be as official boyfriends. He was having enough trouble trying to remain cool as it was, and if they held hands now? It would probably make his brain explode out of his skull. So he attempted not to look as awkward as he felt while he kept his arms as close as it was humanly possible to his sides. 

Besides, what if Darren didn’t want to hold hands with him? Chris wasn’t about to try reaching for Darren’s hand only to have Darren reject him. 

“Have you ever gotten on a cable car?” Darren asked him.

“No, never,” Chris answered.

“Well, then, today you’re going to.”

The cable car wasn’t at all how Chris had seen in the few movies he had seen that were set in San Francisco; it wasn’t just an interesting touristic transportation, it was a public transportation vehicle that everyone in the entire city used for various reasons. The cable car was a lot busier and a lot more crowded than Chris would’ve liked. While he didn’t mind sharing his personal space with Darren, he didn’t want complete strangers, both the ones seated and the ones standing around him, invading it. 

Darren must’ve seen his discomfort, because he interlaced his arm with Chris’ and leaned in to tell him, “Don’t worry, I won’t let you get lost.”

Chris instantly moved closer to Darren—or as close as he could, always careful not to let their hands touch or even brush together. 

During the ride, Darren kept pointing out buildings and shops and beautiful houses, and Chris kind of wanted to stop time so that he could take a better look at everything that Darren was showing him. The city was beautiful, why had Chris never taken the time to get to know it? 

Suddenly Darren’s eyes widened and he said, “Oh, this is where we get off!” 

“Here?”

“Well, we’re still gonna walk a little, but yes! C’mon!” He helped Chris climb down from the cable car, grabbing both of his arms and then taking one of Chris’ hands between his own.

Chris stopped breathing for about three seconds, his lungs starting to work again—albeit a lot less efficiently—only when Darren began to drag him towards wherever it was they were going to. His hand was probably tense against Darren’s, his entire body rigid as he moved like some sort of toy with no flexible joints. He glanced down at their interlaced hands, and for some reason he couldn’t stop looking at them. Darren’s touch hadn’t given him the adrenaline it had the day they became “official”, mostly because of the gloves they were wearing, but it still made every single working nerve on Chris’ body stand on the edge, one step away from falling into the abyss. It was a wonderful sensation that Chris was kind of terrified by as well. 

Darren came to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk and turned back to look at Chris. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?” Chris couldn’t say that he had freaked out over them holding hands. Jesus Christ, how embarrassing would that be? But he didn’t need to say anything—Darren seemed to understand him perfectly, because he stared at their joined hands and blushed right up to his ears. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, softly swinging their hands back and forth between them. “Is this okay? I-I wasn’t thinking, I just… I just…”

Then he let out a little nervous laugh that made Chris completely melt on the inside. God, how had he ever doubted this boy?

“It’s okay,” he said with a tiny smile. They stood there, in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at each other until they both started laughing, and Chris actually leaned closer to Darren to lean his head on his shoulder, looking at their hands, tightly gripping one another’s. Darren leaned his head on top of Chris’, and Chris only hoped Darren wouldn’t be able to feel his heartbeat through the small physical contact between them. “So where are we going?” he asked, pulling away from Darren but keeping their hands together. 

“To a playground Chuck and I used to go to when we were kids,” Darren answered as they continued walking. 

Chris couldn’t help but frown a little. “A playground?”

“Is that okay?” Darren squeezed Chris’ hand, and the only thing Chris could think was, _That’s so unfair, you can’t do that to me!_

“Yeah, sure,” Chris replied. “I just didn’t think we were going to a playground.”

“Well, what can I say?” Darren shrugged. “I’m a kid at heart. I’ll take you somewhere else on our next date.”

 _Our next date._ Chris was almost thankful for the winter jacket he was wearing—it provided another layer his heart would have to go through in case it decided to burst out of his ribcage. 

The playground they went to was a little empty, with only a few children running around and going down the slides and hanging from the monkey bars. There was a nearly abandoned swing set with six swings dangling from the metal bar on the top that Chris immediately noticed. 

“Hey, look at—” But before he could finish his sentence, Darren started to run, dragging Chris along towards the swings as he yelled, “C’mon, c’mon!” Chris didn’t know why they were running towards the lonely, sad swings of the playground, but when Darren began laughing, so did Chris, even though he was breathing harshly and he felt like he would cough up his lungs any second now. 

They reached and sat down on adjacent swings, hands still held firmly between them while their other hands grasped the chains beside them. 

“Why did we run if there was no risk of losing the swings to someone else?” Chris panted, his breath coming out in short puffs of air in the cold, winter afternoon. 

“It’s just the appropriate way to get to the swings,” Darren answered, exactly in the same out-of-breath state. “Don’t you remember the rush of being a kid, of taking the best swing before someone else would? That’s not something you forget when you grow up, Chris.”

Chris nodded his head, smiling through his gasps. “That’s true. So we’re somehow going to swing while holding hands?”

Darren looked at their hands, which were awkwardly keeping them from being able to completely sit on the already far too small swings. “I like challenges,” he said. 

Of course that trying to use the swings at a playground when you were holding hands with someone else couldn’t have any result other than disaster. 

But neither Chris nor Darren really cared much about it. 

*

Christmas was one of Darren’s favorite holidays, and Christmas break was about his favorite time of the year, if he was being honest. He loved taking the boxes with the decorations out of the attic with Chuck, he loved helping his mom decorate, he loved wrapping presents, he loved buying the tree and putting on it all the shit he and Chuck used to do in kindergarten and in the first years of elementary school, when December was all about making a decoration for their Christmas tree. And while opening presents on Christmas morning was the best thing ever, a second favorite was the tradition he and his brother had, in which they would try to count the presents each of them had gotten before their mother found them and scolded them for it. 

Chuck had told him on the phone that he was too old to continue their tradition, but Darren was going to convince him otherwise. 

His phone _dinged_ with a message, and when Darren saw who had sent him, he couldn’t help but grin stupidly. 

“Is it your boyfriend?” Chuck asked as he and their dad continued wrapping their respective presents for his mother. Darren had finished wrapping the ones he had bought, and he was now helping his family wrap theirs (although his father had made sure he didn’t wrap any of his own). 

“Maybe,” Darren answered, opening the text message. He had told his entire family all about Chris and about the fact that they were now sort of dating, and Chuck found every opportunity he could to tease him about it. Darren could handle the teasing; it simply reminded him of the fact that Chris was his _boyfriend._

_Chris:  
You know, I thought that my parents would allow me to spend at least my first day home just lying on my bed, but apparently I need to help them wrap presents._

_Chris:  
MY presents (by which I mean, the presents I got them) are already wrapped and under the tree, it’s not my fault they waited until the day before Christmas Eve. _

_Darren:  
Oh my god, you too? It’s like they procrastinated wrapping their presents on purpose so that we could do it for them. Though I have to admit that I enjoy wrapping presents. _

_Darren:  
(Christopher Paul Colfer, poet at heart.)_

_Chris:  
IKR? (And it’s not like I don’t, I just don’t think it’s fair that I have to wrap theirs, too.)_

_Darren:  
CHRIIIIIIIIIIS!! You’re shortening words to their initials!!!!!! :D :D :D_

_Chris:  
I need to save time, I’m wrapping presents! Oops, gotta go. Dad needs me in the living room._

_Chris:  
… “oops, gotta go”? You’re rubbing off on me, Darren, I hope you’re proud of yourself._

_Darren:  
I am, actually. Mr. ICSETII strikes again… you can be Mr. ICSETII #2!  <3_

_Chris:  
OKAY, Dare. I’ll talk to you later. :3_

Darren resisted the urge to hold his phone to his chest and squeal like a child. God, he loved Chris. He loved him more than he had ever loved anyone outside of his family, and every interaction they had still made his heart perform somersaults inside his chest.

“LOVEBIRD!” Chuck cried out from the living room. “Quit talking to your boyfriend and come here to help us!”

“Coming!” Darren yelled back. He looked at the last message Chris sent him before he made his way to his brother and father. 

*

Chris woke up on Christmas Eve and immediately checked his phone. He hadn’t been a phone-dependent person until he met Darren, who sent him text messages every few minutes. It wasn’t that Chris didn’t like answering to those texts—he loved to, actually—it was just… strange to him, periodically checking his phone when he used to leave it abandoned by his bedside table. 

_Darren:  
Heeeeyyyyyyyy.  <3_

_Darren:  
Merry Christmas Eve! :D _

_Chris:  
Merry Christmas Eve. :3 Are you excited for Christmas tonight?_

_Darren:  
I am SO excited! I’ve been peeking under the tree to try to find my presents, but someone always catches me. Chuck threatened to tell my mom this morning…_

_Darren:  
Which is BS because he used to do it with me all the time! We were a team and he FORSOOK ME!!_

_Chris:  
Really? Hannah and I do it every year, too! And we always try to figure out what our parents got us. ;) Try to find a way to work together with your brother again. _

_Darren:  
Any advice for an ambassador apprentice, oh wise Christopher Paul Colfer? I’m gonna need all of your wisdom if I wanna convince my brother to work with me once again._

_Chris:  
Dare, everyone knows that you have to give your enemy a peace offering if you hope to work together. _

_Darren:  
‘kay, I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, boyfriend.  <3_

_Chris:  
You’re welcome, boyfriend. _

_Chris:  
<3._

*

“In the end, I just made my brother realize that if we looked for our presents together, my mom wouldn’t have any evidence that we’d been snooping around underneath the tree. He was kind of jealous because I had one more present than him, but I told him that my presents were smaller, so really, it was only fair that I had more.”

Chris was lying down on his bed—this bed that now felt foreign, so different to the one in his room at Dalton—, staring at the ceiling as he listened to Darren tell him all about his Christmas. He felt so relaxed, so calm, that Darren’s voice was actually soothing, almost like he was talking him to sleep.

“Before I say anything else,” Chris said, “I just want you to know that I’m in the perfect position to fall asleep, so if I suddenly stop answering you for a few minutes, just hang up on me.”

“Okay, boyfriend,” Darren said.

Chris grinned to himself, his arm resting across his stomach. They had fallen into the habit of calling each other _boyfriend_ pretty much all the time, and every time Chris heard Darren use that word to refer to him, he felt his heart do little backflips inside his chest. _Boyfriend_ was starting to become his favorite word. 

“Okay, boyfriend,” he said, “you may continue.”

“Well, that was everything regarding the quest for our presents,” Darren replied. “This morning we had leftovers for breakfast, and may I just say that leftovers as breakfast are the best breakfast ever? Seriously. I don’t know what it is, but food is always so much better when it becomes leftovers. _Especially_ when it comes to Christmas dinner.” 

“I think it’s some kind of universal yet unwritten Physics law that everyone is aware of: when reheated, food will always taste better,” Chris said. His eyelids started drooping, and he couldn’t hold back a yawn even though he covered his mouth with his hand.

“You’re really tired, aren’t you?” Darren asked him, an edge of teasing in his voice. 

“Hannah likes to stay awake every Christmas Eve until the late hours of the night,” Chris answered. “Or, early hours of the morning, I guess, and she likes it even more when I stay awake with her. And then she likes to wake me up to open our presents. I think you’d really get along with her, though—you’ve both got that never-ending energy that I’m both exasperated and amazed by.”

“Maybe one day I could meet her.”

Chris inhaled and exhaled through his nose. He had been thinking about properly introducing Darren to his family, but he still hadn’t told them that he was now dating his best friend. He was sure they would never kick Darren out or forbid Chris from going out with him or from seeing him—they were classmates, after all—but the prospect of bringing Darren to his home, to this stupid town he had grown up in, was an idea he didn’t want to digest. Darren didn’t belong in a place like Clovis, he belonged out in the world, in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York, in cities where people who deserved to be stars became stars. 

“Maybe,” he finally said, if for Darren’s sake more than his own. 

For a few seconds, it was only silence between them. Chris didn’t know if that was the answer Darren had been looking for or if he was disappointed by Chris’ words. But what else was he supposed to say, that he couldn’t wait for Darren to see the awful place he had come from? That he could drop dead from the excitement of having Darren see the horrible, godforsaken town he had run away from? What if it made Darren ashamed of being with Chris? What if _this_ was what destroyed their relationship?

“Well,” Darren said. “I’ll leave you to get some rest.”

“Okay,” Chris said. “I’ll call you tomorrow?”

He heard Darren laugh on the other side of the line. “Is that a question or an affirmation?”

“A bit of both, I guess,” he responded. 

“Okay, boyfriend.” Chris could almost hear Darren smile around the word, the way he himself did when he said it. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.”

“Okay, boyfriend,” he yawned again. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

They hung up at the same time, and Chris was about to turn off his phone when he received a text message from Darren.

_Darren:  
Love you.  <3_

Chris began to type out the words _I love you too_ when he stopped dead in his tracks and erased the message. What was he thinking? He hadn’t dared to say those words to Darren, not even when they weren’t a couple, and he was thinking of doing it over the phone? In a _text message_? If anything, the first time he said the words had to be to Darren’s face, and it had to be when Chris felt ready to say them. He knew Darren wasn’t pressuring him to say it back just because he had already found the courage to do it, and Chris wanted to respect that, too. 

So he just answered Darren with the same heart emoticon and forced himself not to dwell too much on it. 

Of course, he ended up falling asleep hours later, after he had, obviously, dwelled too much on it. 

*

“You guys haven’t even gone on a date yet and you’re already telling him you love him?”

Darren nearly jumped out of the couch while Chuck, who was standing behind him and leaning on the back of the couch, laughed his ass off, the little bastard. 

“Excuse me,” Darren pouted. “I’m having a _private_ conversation. And not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been telling Chris I love him since before we started dating.”

“Why?” Chuck asked him, his laughter ceasing. 

“Because I do?” Darren answered. And it was true, so why shouldn’t he say it?

“Has he said it back to you?” 

“No,” he said, a little annoyed at his brother’s questions. Maybe other people would be angry or disappointed that their significant other hadn’t said _I love you_ back at them after they had said it, but it didn’t bother Darren. Some people found it more difficult to pronounce their words towards anyone outside of their family—even to members of their family—and he didn’t want to force Chris to do something he wasn’t comfortable with. 

Chuck _Hm-_ ed, which only made Darren angrier. 

“Why? What does that matter?”

“I just find it interesting,” said Chuck, “that you’ve told your boyfriend that you love him numerous times and he hasn’t said it back.”

“I don’t mind,” Darren replied hurriedly. 

“No, I know you don’t—”

“So what is this all about? What does it matter so much to you?”

“I just think that… maybe…” Chuck rubbed the back of his head. “Maybe you should tone it down a little? I know that you’ve never held back about what you feel, and I’m not saying you have to. But if you really care about this guy, I think it’d be good to, I don’t know, step back a little? Like, give the guy some space?”

Darren stared at the phone still in his hands, at the last heart emoticon Chris had sent him. He had been messaging Chris practically nonstop since the first day of Christmas break, since Thanksgiving break, really. But he… well, he liked talking to Chris. And Chris had answered to all of his texts without telling Darren to fuck off or anything of the sort. He would… he would tell Darren if he didn’t want them to talk so often, right? He wouldn’t let this go on if it made him uncomfortable, right? 

But what if he didn’t? What if he was hoping Darren would back off a bit and that was why he hadn’t told him _I love you_ back? What if he didn’t want to hurt Darren’s feelings, so this was the only way he could ask for some space between them?

“You think he wants me to give him some space?” Darren wondered, and suddenly he felt like all of his happiness had been drained out of him, like an evil machine had sucked it out of him and left him a sad shell of emptiness. 

“I’m just saying that you don’t have to talk all the time when you’re not together,” Chuck answered him. Darren heard their mother call Chuck from the kitchen, and he watched as his brother walked away from him with a woeful smile on his face, like he pitied Darren somehow. 

Had Darren been too close to Chris lately? Had he overstepped some boundary, some invisible line that he hadn’t realized Chris held around him? 

He let his phone drop to the couch and he pulled his legs to his chest, staring at his communication device like he could make it explode if he looked at it for too long. 

*

If Chris had thought that he was paranoid before, going back to Dalton only made the feeling intensify. 

After their chat on Christmas Day, Darren hadn’t sent him any other text, and whenever Chris sent him one, his boyfriend would answer him with short sentences, almost never using emojis or emoticons or any kind of smiley faces, and never shortening words to their initials anymore. At first, Chris thought that he might have caught Darren on a grumpy mood, which was a clear sign of the apocalypse, but he decided to let it slide. 

When it kept happening, Chris started to ask Darren if he was okay, and he was assured time and time again that nothing was wrong, but their phone conversations, even the ones they had when Chris called him, were still short and without Darren’s usual joy. Chris tried to convince himself that everything was fine, that maybe Darren wanted to spend some more time with his family instead of talking to him and he didn’t want to be an asshole about it, and that things would go back to normal between them when they went back to school on January. At least, those were still his hopes when New Year’s rolled around, and he found himself looking every few seconds at his phone, just to make sure he wouldn’t miss any text Darren might send him. 

But he was so very wrong in every sense of the word. His text of _Happy New Year, boyfriend,_ was met with absolute silence. 

Not only did Darren barely talk to him when they returned to Dalton, he seemed to actually be _avoiding_ Chris. In every class they shared, he pretended not to see the notes Chris passed him, and he would get out of the room running before Chris had a chance to talk to him. 

Had Darren grown tired of him? Did… did he not love Chris anymore? Was it because Chris had never found the courage to say he loved Darren, too? Did Darren want them to break up? No, no. If Darren wanted them to end the relationship, he would tell Chris about it, not avoid him. He had been the one to first confess his crush for Chris, after all. 

But then… why was he acting so strange?

There was only one way to find out: Chris had no other choice but to confront Darren about it. 

*

Chris waited. He waited and he waited, and he waited until Darren had let his guard down enough to stop actively avoiding him. It was like he wasn’t even thinking about it anymore, which was the perfect opportunity Chris had hoped for all week. 

On Friday afternoon, after their last class of the day, Chris watched as Darren packed his books in his bag and made his way towards the door. He was two steps outside of the classroom when Chris caught up to him, took his wrist, and started dragging him away to his dorm room.

“Chris?” Darren asked, almost in bewilderment, like he couldn’t believe Chris was next to him. 

“We need to talk,” Chris muttered, then repeated it when he realized he hadn’t said it loud enough. “We _really_ need to talk.”

“I can’t right now, I—”

“ _Darren_.” Chris stopped, forcing Darren to come to a halt as well, and he turned to his… were they still boyfriends, even after they hadn’t talked to each other in so long, when they hadn’t even seen each other in so long? “I need to talk to you,” he said now, hoping that Darren could hear the urgency in his voice. “Can we please just… talk?” 

Apparently, his pleas worked, because Darren sighed deeply, like he thought it was insane to agree to Chris’ idea, and he nodded, allowing himself to be dragged to Chris’ dorm room so that they could talk. 

The walk towards the B building was tense and awkward, and Chris wanted to cry tears of stress, or anger, or despair, or all of the other negative emotions he was feeling at the moment. Things had never been like this between them—not that he could remember, anyway. If there had ever been any awkwardness in the air when they were together, it was because Chris was nervous about doing something wrong, like the first time they had held hands after officially becoming a couple. 

When they finally reached his room, Chris waited until Darren was inside before he closed the door behind him. 

“Okay,” Darren said, trying and failing so much to sound nonchalant that it hurt Chris, it _physically_ hurt him. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

“What’s wrong?” Chris asked, holding back the urge to add the words _with you_ at the end of his question. 

Darren shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit,” Chris said, and he could see Darren wince at the violence in his voice. “Don’t give me that crap, okay? I know that there’s something wrong, no matter how much you try to convince me otherwise.”

His… best friend said nothing, just looked at him like he was at a loss, like he didn’t know what he was doing here at all. So Chris went on.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he began, feeling his throat close up and unshed tears sting his eyes. “Ever since Christmas break. I thought maybe you were upset about something, and I thought maybe you wanted to talk to me about it. But you didn’t. You started avoiding me then and you continued to do so when we came back and I had to basically _stalk_ you so that we could get a chance to talk. And if…”

Chris shut his eyes closed, and he tightened his hands into fists. 

“And if you want to break up with me or stop seeing me altogether, I would appreciate it if you were upfront about it!” 

He lowered his head, let it drop to his chest, and he stood there, in the middle of his room, expecting Darren to confirm all his fears, to thank him for giving him the chance to end this… this… _beautiful_ thing they had shared together, to walk out of his life and leave Chris overwhelmed with the sudden emptiness he would be faced with. 

But Darren—he didn’t do any of those things.

“No,” he said; _begged_ , almost. “No, no, no, Chris, no, oh my god, what… what are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about?!” Chris cried, lifting his head up to look at Darren. “I’m talking about how we’ve been strangers since Christmas Day!”

“Oh, Chris, no, I…” Darren reached his arms out to him, like he wanted to bring Chris against his chest and never let him go, and Chris didn’t know if he was hoping he would or if he would repel his touch. Darren didn’t let him decide, since he let his arms drop to his sides and stayed on his feet in front of Chris. “No, I… I… I didn’t… I mean, I didn’t start avoiding you because I wanted to break up with you.”

“Then why have you been avoiding me?” Chris wondered, terrified of hearing the actual answer.

Darren, once again, said nothing for a few seconds. Then he ran his hands through his hair and let them rest on the nape of his neck, his fingers interlaced together. 

“I’ve been… having _really_ strong feelings,” Darren said, “and I wanted to kinda sort through them because I didn’t wanna scare you away.”

“Scare me away?” Chris could find no reason whatsoever to be scared away by Darren. What kind of strong feelings was Darren having that would drive him to believe he needed to back off? “Why, because of the texts you sent me over Christmas break?”

“No, not because of the texts I sent you,” Darren answered before he bit his lip and corrected, “Actually, yes. I mean, it’s not entirely because of the texts, but they do play a big part in all of this.”

“In all of what? Dare, you’re not making any sense.”

“I know, I know, it’s crazy, I know it is, but I spent all of Christmas break thinking about this, like, thinking about us, about you and me, and I’m not asking you to get married or anything, I mean, we’re in high school and everything, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what _are_ you saying?” Chris felt like his body wasn’t enough to contain his voice, to contain how loud he wanted it to be right now, he didn’t even trust his own voice to convey how confused he felt. “Because whatever it is, Darren, I’m not following!”

“I’m saying,” Darren continued, “that I’m in love with you, Chris.”

He hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t even raised his voice, and those words still managed to make Chris’ breath stop.

“You’re my best friend, Chris,” said Darren, his head tilted toward the ground, his eyes looking up at Chris as if he were a puppy who’d just been yelled at. “And I love that. I love that that hasn’t changed just because we’re dating. And I’m honest to God in love with you, Chris, I really am, like—” Darren looked up at the ceiling and laughed wetly, and Chris thought his heart might be breaking. He had never seen Darren cry, he had no idea how to stop it, how to comfort him, how to make things okay, he didn’t even know if things _were_ okay. 

“Like, _so_ in love with you, Chris, it’s crazy. You don’t expect anything from me, not like everyone else does. With you, I’m not the ‘most likely to succeed’, or the ‘most likely to become a famous musician’, or the ‘most likely to become Prom King’, or anything like that. Even before we were a couple, I was never any of those things, I never _had_ to be any of those things with you. I can _be_ myself with you, and that’s like, the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. And, I mean, that’s one of the many reasons I’m in love with you, you know, but then I was texting you every day because I couldn’t _not_ do it, and the last day we properly talked, Chuck said that maybe I was being too annoying, that you needed your space, and I thought that I was crossing some sort of boundary, that I needed to step away for a second because I was pushing you too much. And I didn’t know what to do, Chris, most of the time I _don’t_ know what to do, I just try to go with the flow and I know it doesn’t always work out, and you always know what to do, you always have a plan and you always know exactly where you’re going, god, how do you stand being with someone like me?”

Darren covered his eyes with his hands, his head still tilted up to the ceiling. Chris took a deep breath, because for a second, he was afraid his body would shut down and stop working. How had Darren—wonderful, amazing, lovely and loving Darren, this incredible boy that Chris had loved since nearly the first month he had known the guy, this incredible boy Chris was so, so, so head over heels in love with, because he was, he _was_ —fallen for someone like _Chris_?

“How do _I_ stand being with someone like you?” Chris tried to control the tone of his voice, but there was nothing he could do to stop himself from sounding like his twelve-year-old self: annoying and high-pitched. Darren lowered his head to look straight at him. “How do _you_ stand being with someone like _me_?!” Chris cried, and he was glad to have finally asked the question that had been on his mind for months, the one question he kept asking himself over and over again, ever since he and Darren had become friends.

“I’m…” Chris ran his hands through his hair. “I’m the least sociable person in the world! People don’t notice me, they don’t care about me unless they need something from me; an essay, a report, something I can help them with. I’m not…” He exhaled loudly through his mouth. “I’m not _likable._ Or special. At all. And I actually never know what I’m doing! I have no idea why you think I do, when all the time it looks like you’re the one who has everything under control. You’re incredible, Darren, and I’m just…”

Chris gestured all over himself, too scared to finish his sentence, to ask the unspoken question implied in his words.

_Why are you even with me?_

Darren’s eyes widened, and his expression was so comical—so confused, so in shock, displaying different emotions at the same time—that Chris would’ve laughed if he weren’t on the brink of tears. He was afraid of hearing the answer.

“You don’t think you’re equally incredible?” Darren asked, and okay, it wasn’t what Chris expected to hear, though the tears spilled over his cheeks all the same. “You don’t think you’re special? Chris, you’re…” Darren threw his hands into the air as he made his way towards Chris, closing the space between them. “You’re amazing! You’re one of the greatest human beings I’ve ever met! You are caring and thoughtful and selfless, and I know I’ve said this before, but your stories are the best thing ever, okay? I won’t stop repeating that until it’s drilled into that thick skull of yours!”

Chris laughed, and he wiped the tears from his face with the sleeve of his sweater.

“You love with all your heart, too, I can see it when you talk to me about your parents and Hannah. And you don’t judge me,” Darren went on, “which relates to what I was talking about earlier, about being myself around you.”

“I actually judge you a lot,” Chris said, and Darren laughed that wet laugh of his that only made Chris cry more. “Though I usually judge you because you’re too nice or something along those lines. Like that one time you bought one of those Pedigree pouches to feed a stray dog—”

“And she ended up following me around the entire day,” Darren finished for him, and Chris laughed through his tears.

“I told you she would, remember?”

“You did,” said Darren. “And that’s another thing I really like about you, that you keep me grounded. Sometimes I dream too much and too big, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but you help me keep it real, too. You keep me on my feet so I don’t fly off.”

 _And you keep me on my feet so that I don’t crumble down_ , Chris thought, though he didn’t say it out loud. “So you stopped talking to me because your brother made you think I wanted you to back off?”

Darren laughed again, except that this time, it was the laugh that Chris loved listening, the kind of laugh that made a rainy day feel like an opportunity for success. 

“I guess it does sound kinda ridiculous when you say it like that,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I caused this mess because I got scared.”

“You’re not the only one that got scared,” said Chris, taking a step to close the distance remaining between them. “I was terrified that you hated me, that you didn’t want to see me ever again.”

“I would never want that,” Darren said as he took a step forward. “You’ll always be my best friend, Chris. I’d be crazy if I ever said I didn’t ever want to see you again. Actually, if I ever do, feel free to punch me, as I’ve most likely been replaced by an alien clone.”

Chris chuckled, then his chuckle became a small laugh, and then it became loud laughter that Darren was infected by, and suddenly they were guffawing like complete idiots in the middle of Chris’ room, their arms reaching out to catch and hold on to each other. By the time they had to stop laughing to regain their breaths, they were locked in an embrace so tight that Chris felt all of his pieces coming back together. 

“I love you,” Darren whispered, and Chris wanted to cry all over again for entirely different reasons. 

“Me, too,” he whispered back. 

Darren simply hugged him tighter. It wasn’t an _I love you,_ not exactly, but it was a baby step in that direction. Chris was just glad that Darren had understood that without him having to say it. 

“A good kind of scary,” he said. “As long as we’re in it together, right?”

“As long as we’re together,” Darren agreed. 

After what seemed like an hour, they lay down on Chris’ bed to watch a movie on his laptop, cuddled up closer than they had during their Halloween movie marathon. At some point, Chris fell asleep against Darren’s chest, his boyfriend’s arms wrapped tightly around him, his hands running through his hair. 

They could work this out. They could go a really long way together as long as they were always honest with each other; as long as they worked together.

And for now, that was enough.

*

Darren couldn’t stop staring at Chris. His boyfriend was beautiful, the early sunset of late February illuminating his profile and creating a halo around his entire figure. 

“… and so what I want to do is write a story about these children who end up in a magical world where fairy tales are real. But it’s not like, the Disney fairy tales we grew up with, more like, for example, what happened to Goldilocks after she was chased out by the bears? What happened to Red Riding Hood after she and her grandmother got rid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

“That’s so amazing,” Darren said, and Chris blushed right up to his ears, pushing a strand of hair behind his ear. “I never stopped to wonder that.”

“I could think of nothing else when my mom read me bedtime stories,” he admitted, swinging their interlaced hands between them. 

Darren looked at their entwined fingers, and he thought back to their first date, to the first time they had ever held hands as boyfriends, when everything was still new and thrilling and marvelous, and he couldn’t quite believe how fast and how hard he had fallen for this boy, for this wonderful boy that the universe was somehow letting him have for now. 

Before he knew what he was doing, Darren was leaning in—slowly, giving Chris the chance to back out if he wanted to—and after the tiniest moment of hesitation, he pressed his lips to Chris’. 

It was nothing incredibly romantic. It was the kind of innocent kiss that toddlers shared on the playground, when girls married boys under the slides and declared their love without a care in the world. It was close-mouthed, truly only a pressing of their lips together, lasting about three seconds before Chris kissed him back, his other hand reaching out to hold on to Darren’s wrist, and Darren did the same, and they were tied around each other, keeping themselves afloat but grounded, too, and Darren was in absolute bliss. 

When they broke apart and he opened his eyes, he was surprised to find Chris’ entire face flushed, his lips tightly pressed into a line, his entire body as tense as Darren had felt the day he asked Chris out on a date for the first time.

“Oh, god,” Chris said. “I was awful, wasn’t I?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry!” he cried, letting go of Darren completely to cover his face, though Darren could still see the red of his skin behind his hands. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to kiss, I’d never been kissed before! I mean, that’s not an excuse, I know, but you can’t blame me for being horrible at something I’ve never done, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“Chris, Chris, hey,” Darren said as soothingly as he could, grabbing Chris’ waist and pulling him closer until their chests were almost pressed together. “Hey, what are you talking about? That wasn’t awful.”

“It…” Chris shyly uncovered his face, resting his hands on Darren’s shoulders. “It wasn’t?”

“Not at all,” Darren smiled. “And you know what? I don’t know what I’m doing, either.”

“You don’t?” Chris asked, and Darren almost felt flattered at how surprised he sounded. 

“I think it’s better this way, though,” he said. “’Cause now we can learn what to do. Together.”

“Yeah,” Chris said, the flush of his face demeaning until the only red on his skin was caused by the cold around them. “Yeah, it is.”

He then cupped Darren’s cheeks with his hands, and Darren shivered at how cold they were, but he also laughed giddily, a rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins at the how intimate the physical contact between them was. When Chris started to lean in, Darren met him halfway.

Their second kiss was so, so much better than their first. 

*

“Spring is here,” Darren said as they watched a flower bud slowly starting to open on the tree outside of Chris’ dorm room.

“I can’t believe it’s already spring,” Chris muttered, leaning his head against Darren’s shoulder. “Soon it’ll be summer, and then we’ll be out of school, and then we’ll have to go back to school and before you know it, we’ll find each other with mismatched costumes on different sides of my door on Halloween night.”

“Hey!” Darren bumped their shoulders together. “We’ll be better at communicating with each other this Halloween, and we’ll be the best dressed couple in the entirety of San Francisco!”

“The entirety of San Francisco is a lot of people, don’t you think?”

“Well, yeah,” Darren said, kissing Chris’ temple. “But we’ll still have the best costumes.”

“Okay, boyfriend. If you say so,” Chris said, internally screaming at how excited he felt over that tiny kiss Darren had given him. 

“Okay, boyfriend. Oh, hey, look, there’s another flower bud!” 

*

“There’s a reason why Biology is my sworn enemy, Christopher Paul Colfer,” Darren mumbled as he resisted the urge to throw his Biology textbook off his lap and against the wall. Except that he _did_ push it off his lap, wincing at the thud of it hitting the ground. 

“C’mon, Darren,” Chris said, reaching out to hold his boyfriend’s hand with his own. “I know you can do it! You’ve got this, you just need to stay calm and be confident in your answers.”

“ _Uuuuuuuugh_ ,” Darren groaned, leaning forward until his forehead was on Chris’ shoulder. “I need to get at least a B+ or my parents will kill me. Well, not really, but I just wanna have something higher than my last C-.”

“I know you’ll get it.” Chris wrapped his arms around Darren and brought him closer, even in this uncomfortable position they were in. Then he pulled away and held Darren by the shoulders. The look he had on his face scared Darren a little: it was… kind of eerie. Intense. Scary, and yet really attractive. “I have an idea.”

“O… kay?” Darren asked, a little frightened but excited at the same time. 

“We can have another pop quiz,” Chris said. “And for every answer you get right, I’ll give you a kiss.”

Darren only heard his boyfriend’s joyful laughter while he nearly jumped out of the bed to retrieve his Biology textbook. 

*

“Hey, boyfriend,” Darren greeted Chris in the hallway after their last period on the last Thursday of the semester. Chris couldn’t believe the year had gone by so quickly. It seemed like only yesterday, he was having an online interview with Principal Morrison to be allowed to transfer to Dalton for his sophomore year. In just a few months, he would start his junior year, and Darren would be on his senior year, and even though he didn’t want to think too much about it now, Chris saw himself sitting at Darren’s graduation ceremony next June, cheering loudly as his best friend received his diploma and smiled for the pictures his family would surely take of him. 

“Hey, boyfriend,” he said, Darren’s hand smoothly crawling up his bringing him back to reality. “Did you get your papers back?”

“I’m only missing my History of Music essay,” Darren answered. “But guess who got an A- on his Biology test?”

Chris gasped and stood right in front of his boyfriend. “You did?” When Darren nodded, Chris launched himself into his arms, wrapping his own around Darren’s shoulders and clinging to him like a koala bear. “Oh, my god, Darren, I’m so proud of you! Congratulations!”

“It was all thanks to you,” Darren said, his voice resonating right against Chris’ ear. “You and your wonderful motivation.”

“Oh, pish posh,” Chris said, still clinging to Darren. “You just needed a little push. Oh, Dare, that’s amazing!” He broke away from his boyfriend and quickly kissed him before he completely pulled back from him. 

“I know, right?” Darren gave him a kiss as well, and he threw an arm over Chris’ shoulders as they made their way to Chris’ dorm room to enjoy their second to last day of official classes. “How about you? Got everything back from your teachers?”

“I just need to get back my chronicle,” Chris replied, his own arm around Darren’s waist. “But I’m more excited about Wednesday, though.”

“I _know_!” Darren jumped a little, and his similarity to a cartoon character made Chris laugh to himself. “A trip to Six Flags! Did your old school ever organize trips like these?”

Chris rolled his eyes and breathed out a puff of air. “My old school didn’t organize anything. Ever. I actually can’t believe this is an annual thing! Like, seriously, every single year?”

“Every single year,” Darren confirmed. “And since it’s your first school trip, I’ll make sure it’s one you never forget!”

Chris leaned on his tiptoes so that he could kiss Darren’s cheek, and even though he felt the words _I love you_ on the tip of his tongue, he couldn’t say it yet. But he snuggled closer to Darren as they continued their way to his dorm room and hoped that his boyfriend would understand him. From the way Darren tightened his arm around his shoulders, he did. 

*

Chris yawned as he and Darren made their way to the outside of campus on the last “official” day of school of the year. They had stayed awake until late texting each other, talking about the trip, about what they hoped to see, until Chris had been too tired to form coherent sentences. They had both slept less than three hours and Darren looked good as new. How did he _do_ that? It was like he had batteries plugged into him 24/7, with extra batteries in case he ran out of energy. 

Darren nudged his shoulder, and Chris smiled almost automatically. 

“Are you excited?” Darren asked him, the back of his hand brushing Chris’.

“I am,” Chris said, interlacing their hands together. “I mean, it probably doesn’t look like it, but I am. I’m just a little sleep deprived as well.”

“Me too,” said Darren, grinning and then biting his lip, like he was trying to hold himself together. “This is so exciting! It’s been so long since I last went to Six Flags! I wonder if there are still any of the rides I remember.” 

“I’ve never been to Six Flags,” Chris said. 

Darren turned to look at him with that fake heartbroken look on his face that made Chris laugh. “Never?”

Chris shrugged. “It’s not a big deal, it just never happened. I’ve been to theme parks and state fairs, but not to Six Flags.”

“Well, I’ll make sure that today is a wonderful experience for you, then. Your first school trip and your first trip to Six Flags, all in one! This is a special occasion,” Darren said, and Chris wanted to stop in their tracks just so that he could kiss him. It was not even four in the morning and his boyfriend was already making butterflies flutter inside Chris’ stomach. 

“I’m sure it will be,” he said, grasping the strap of his backpack. 

They got to the outside of campus, where most of their classmates were clustered together around the teachers who would be their chaperones during the trip, including Chris’ Creative Writing teacher, Darren’s History of Music teacher, and their Biology teacher (Mrs. Mabel, Mr. Carlton, and Miss Taylor respectively). Principal Morrison was talking to another teacher that Chris didn’t recognize. The buses that would take them to Six Flags and bring them back to Dalton tomorrow morning were already parked on the street. There were so many that Chris couldn’t count them all.

“All right, everybody, listen up!” said the principal after a few minutes of waiting for the rest of the school to arrive. “It seems like we’re all here, so listen up. Each of these buses can take around forty-six of you, so we have decided to organize you alphabetically to know what bus you’ll be in.”

There were some groans across the crowd, and Principal Morrison immediately said, “Don’t worry, we can change some of you as long as you tell us now so that there’s no confusion on the way back. Now that that’s settled, please pay attention to the lists we’ll read. If you hear a teacher call your name, you gather around them. Understood?”

He was answered with echoes of _Yes, Principal Morrison._

Chris tightened his grip on Darren’s hand. He was starting to sweat a little, but Darren didn’t seem to mind. “What if we aren’t on the same bus?” Chris asked, his heart beginning to pound harder inside his chest. He knew he wouldn’t survive from four to six hours on a bus with other forty-five excited students on his own. 

“I’m sure we will,” Darren answered, and his voice soothed Chris. Slightly. “And even if we aren’t, you heard what the principal said. I’ll just ask someone to switch places with me.”

Okay. Okay, yeah, he could do that. Chris was worrying over nothing. 

“… Marissa Carmin, Joanie Clinton, Ivan Coester, Chris Colfer, Valerie Crast, Spencer Crenshaw, Darren Criss, Eliza Crow, Patrick De La Torre…” 

Chris sighed in relief, albeit inwardly. A smile overtook his face when he heard both his and Darren’s names on the same list, and he didn’t even care that their chaperone would be Mrs. Mabel. Not even she could ruin this moment for him. Darren nudged their shoulders together again, and Chris leaned a little against him. 

After all the lists were read, everyone followed their respective chaperone to their respective bus. Mrs. Mabel said that they could sit in whatever seat they wanted to, but she would appreciate if they could sit alphabetically, just so she wouldn’t have to look for them all over the bus when they came back. Chris heard Darren ask Ivan and Valerie if he could switch places with whoever had to sit next to Chris. 

They all climbed on the bus and sat in the order their names had been called. Chris was paired up with Valerie, and she immediately took Darren’s place next to Spencer. “Thanks,” Darren said. He took a Gatorade, a pack of Red Vines, his iPod and his earbuds out of his backpack, and he held out his hand to take Chris’. Chris took one of the Diet Coke bottles he had packed out of his and handed it over to Darren, who put both of their bags on the space above their seats. 

“Okay, overall rules, people!” called Mrs. Mabel from the front of the bus once everyone was seated. “We’ll stop at a 7 Eleven so that you can buy some breakfast, and we won’t stop again until we get there, right as the theme park opens. Since it’s Wednesday, hopefully we won’t find it as crowded as it is on weekends. You’ll be free to roam the park and spend whatever money you might have brought to your liking, but remember that we’ll stop at a convenience store on the way home so that you can buy snacks for the trip back. I won’t be paying for anyone’s dinner, and if you lose your wallet, it’s not my problem!”

“Some chaperone she is,” Darren whispered, and Chris bit back a smile. 

“When we get to Six Flags, we’ll go over a few more rules,” Mrs. Mabel said. “Right now, just keep yourselves from getting us pulled over by a cop, all right?”

The bus’s engine roared to life a few seconds later, and Chris heard all of the forty-five other students he was surrounded by, including Darren, cheer and scream their approval. 

“Here we go,” Darren said, and his grin was enough to get Chris hyped up. 

When they stopped at the 7 Eleven, Chris decided to go to the restroom before he had to go to the one on the bus while Darren bought some more snacks. Chris walked back into the store and found Darren standing in the middle of the candy aisle, eyeing a bag of Red Vines. He had a small grocery basket hanging from his arm. 

“Seriously?” Chris asked, bumping into Darren. “You’ve got like three packets of those things in your bag and you want to buy more?”

“You can never have too many Red Vines,” Darren said, and he grabbed the bag and threw it down on his grocery basket. “Anything you want?”

“I don’t know,” Chris said as he looked around the aisle. “I don’t want candy so early in the morning, but I know I’m going to want candy later on in the day.”

“We can always try to find some cheap candy inside the park.” 

“I guess.” Chris ended up grabbing a small bag of mini Hershey’s, a bottle of water, and a packed croissant, plus a Wonka Nerds Rope, which prompted Darren to grab a packet of Juicy Fruit bubblegum. They each paid for their respective snacks and headed back towards the bus, where Mrs. Mabel was impatiently looking at her watch. 

“How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?” Chris asked in the middle of a yawn once they were in their seats again. 

“I don’t know,” said Darren. 

“You think I could take a quick power nap so that I don’t fall asleep on my feet when we get in line at the first ride?”

Darren let out a small laugh, and he ran his hand through Chris’ hair. Chris leaned against Darren’s shoulder so that his boyfriend wouldn’t see the blush on his face. God, that felt good, and Chris was slightly ashamed of how much he wanted Darren to keep doing that until they had to climb down the bus again. 

“I can wake you up if I see something interesting,” Darren mumbled, pressing a kiss to Chris’ temple that made Chris feel warm and fuzzy on the inside while his stomach butterflies flapped their wings around. 

“Okay,” Chris said, his eyes already closed. “Also wake me up if I start drooling on you.”

“Will do, boyfriend.”

He bit back the grin about to overtake his lips before he decided to let it show. He snuggled closer to Darren and muttered, “Okay, boyfriend.”

Chris didn’t fall asleep immediately, contrary to what he thought would happen. Instead, his body took its time to gently shut down, and while it did, Chris felt Darren’s hand on his hair and his head on top of his own and, occasionally, his lips on his temple, with Darren either pressing kisses to his skin or mouthing random words against it. 

* 

“Okay, okay, _all right, everyone, settle down!”_ Mrs. Mabel said as soon as all of her students were out of the bus. “The park is opening soon, so come and get your tickets! We’ll meet back at the entrance at 6 PM, _sharp,_ so I want you all to be back on time or you’ll have to call your parents to come pick you up!”

Chris rubbed the sleep off his eyes. Both he and Darren had fallen deeply asleep on the bus, and although Chris was sure that the first roller coaster they got on would wake him up, he wanted to be fully aware of his surroundings by the time they made it to their first roller coaster. 

“C’mon, Chris, c’mon!” Darren, already more awake than a toddler on the day of his birthday, dragged Chris over to Mrs. Mabel to get their tickets. He handed Chris his own, and they both held hands and their tickets in their other hands as they stood in line to enter Six Flags. Chris started breathing in and out as they crossed the entrance, taking slow steps into the park until they were on the other side, and Chris could hear the noise of the roller coasters’ engines as they were turned on. He tightened his grip on Darren’s hand while he looked around at this whimsical world he had suddenly crossed into. 

“You okay?” Darren asked him, seeing the expression on his face. He probably looked both scared shitless and excited as hell. 

“I’m trying not to have a heart attack,” Chris said, “but overall, yes, I’m okay.”

Darren tried to open up the map they had been given by the lady inside the tickets’ booth, but since he had only one hand available, Chris helped him open it, holding it between the two of them. “Okay,” Darren said. “We’re at your orders, Chris! Where do you wanna go first?”

“I don’t know,” Chris mumbled. “What would you recommend for our first ride?”

“I think we should get on a really big roller coaster first,” Darren replied. “So that when we get on the other ones, they won’t be so scary!”

Chris took another deep breath, and when he let it out, he started laughing. God, he wanted to jump and scream and hug Darren and kiss Darren and he felt like he would burst out of his body if he didn’t get moving soon enough.

“Okay,” he agreed. “What would you say is the toughest ride? The one that makes you fearless once you’ve survived it?”

“I’d have to say the _Goliath_ ,” replied Darren. “Tallest drop in the entire park. Well, if you don’t count _Escape from Krypton._ ” He let go of Chris’ hand to point out the _Goliath_ on the map and… oh… oh, okay… yeah, that definitely seemed like a really tall drop. 

“Let’s go!” Chris yelled, hooking his arm through Darren’s as they both followed the signs to the roller coaster. Chris continued to run all the way through the almost completely empty queue, with Darren trying to keep up with him and laughing as he did so. 

They stopped once they got to the very beginning of the line, where only six or seven people stood before them. Some of their classmates ended up behind them, and Chris felt his adrenaline increase at their excited murmurs.

“How’re you feeling?” Darren asked as he folded the map up again and put it on his back pocket.

“Terrified.” Chris said.

Darren laughed at this, and he hooked their arms together again. “You’re gonna love this,” he said. “Once we conquer this jerk, we’ll conquer the entire park.”

“Wonderful,” Chris whispered, and he found out that he actually meant it. Man, they hadn’t even gotten on the ride and he already felt invincible.

This was what Darren had done for him. He had helped him leave behind the scared, frightened boy he had been when he had arrived at Dalton Academy. He had helped him become this new boy who took risks and who led the way instead of being led by someone else. He had helped Chris become… someone he was proud to be. 

As the people in front of them got on the ride and the tiny electric gates closed before them, Chris took their precious few seconds to wrap his arms around Darren’s waist and kiss him on the mouth, earning catcalls and whoops from the classmates behind them in the line. When they broke away, Darren’s lips were still slightly puckered, and he always took a second more than Chris to open his eyes. Chris loved the chance he got to witness that every time they kissed. 

“What was that for?” Darren asked.

Chris shuddered, and before he knew it, the words he had been so desperate to say, the words that bubbled out of him every moment he was with Darren finally left the tip of his tongue and came out into the world to be heard.

“I love you.”

Darren’s jaw dropped, but he quickly recovered, and he bent down to kiss Chris again. Chris heard someone cry out, “Get a room!” He couldn’t care less about who had said it, or about the louder catcalls and whoops they got this time. 

“I love you, too,” Darren said, right before the electric gates opened and they were allowed to get in the ride. Chris didn’t even have to ask Darren where he wanted to sit—they both rushed towards the very front, where they would be able to observe the drop as they inched closer to it, and they buckled up their seatbelts and lowered the security bar in front of them. 

“Are you ready?” Darren asked him as the ride surged forward before slowing down and the girl from the ride waved at them and wished them good luck. 

“Definitely,” said Chris. He rested one of his hands on the space between them on the seat. Darren did the same, and when their hands met, they entwined their fingers together, holding each other as best as they could. When they started going up, Chris tightened his fingers around Darren’s, trying to keep himself from hyperventilating. 

_It’s like when you go on a roller coaster._

Images flashed before his mind: Darren nervously looking at him, glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes as he confessed that he had a crush on him; Darren falling back down against the bed while Chris tried to make sense of the fact that his best friend liked him, too.

_But even if you can see everything that’s coming before it does, you still feel your stomach drop when you start to go up._

“Oh, my god,” Chris mumbled as he saw them approaching the beginning of the drop. Now it was Darren who tightened the grip he had on Chris’ fingers. He turned to look at Chris with a smile that told him everything was going to be just fine.

“A good kind of scary,” Darren said.

_So you close your eyes and open them again because you want to see it; you want to see the moment when the roller coaster starts tipping down._

That moment was now, _now,_ and Chris took a deep breath and kept his eyes open as their wagon slowly started tipping down, down, down… until the air was taken out of Chris’ lungs and he found himself screaming, and the wind around him messed up his hair and all he could hear was Darren screaming beside him, a screaming combined with laughter and nerve-wracking yelling as they finally stopped falling, only to continue on their high speed ride, and the longer they went on, the tighter Chris held on to Darren’s hand and the other way around. 

_And once that first fall is behind you, you can breathe again._

Even though he couldn’t exactly breathe, Chris felt like he could.

Sooner than he would’ve thought, they were back at the beginning, the same girl waving at them again as a voice over the speakers told them to exit to their right. Chris and Darren unbuckled their seatbelts, and they got out of the ride as soon as the security bar was lifted off them, though they held hands again as soon as they were out of the wagon. 

Chris took the trip down the exit stairs as an opportunity to catch his breath, and he could hear Darren doing the same. When he glanced at him, his boyfriend was grinning widely, so wide that Chris wondered if his cheeks would crack.

“That was amazing,” Darren said, his voice a little hoarse. “That was so _fucking_ amazing, oh my god!”

“That was the best kind of scary I’ve ever felt in my life,” Chris said, and he took a step to the side so that his side was almost pressed to Darren’s, separated only by their arms. 

“I get it better now.”

Chris turned his head to look at Darren. “Get what better now?”

“Your roller coaster metaphor,” Darren answered. “You’re right. That was the best kind of scary ever. Being with you is exactly like that, every single moment we’re together. I love it.” He then came to a halt, and they were forced to stand in front of each other. “I love _you._ ”

Chris’ heart was going to go into some sort of cardiac arrest. He had never felt such strong emotions all at once, especially happy, joyous emotions that made him launch himself into his boyfriend’s arms and press his face against the crook of his neck and whisper _I love you, too_ against his skin and thank the entire universe for having put Darren on his path. Because if feeling a good kind of scary was like this, he wanted to be scared for the rest of his life, all as long as Darren was by his side to feel scared together. 

They finally came out of the ride, watching more people get in the queue for the _Goliath_ in front of them. Chris couldn’t wait to see what other roller coasters the park had for them, but he… he kind of felt like the _Goliath_ had been over way too soon for his liking. 

Darren was looking at him by the time Chris did the same, and, almost as if they had read each other’s mind, they both grinned almost wickedly. 

“You wanna go again?” Darren asked him

_And when the ride is over the first thing you want to do is get in line so that you can do it all over again._

“I thought you’d never ask,” Chris answered. 

And they broke into a sprint as they headed towards the end of the line, their hands still intertwined between them.

In the end, they rode every attraction at least twice.


End file.
